JAPAN: PANELISTS STRESS NEED TO KNOW WHO DEATH ROW INMATES ARE

in Japan, panelists at a Tokyo symposium stressed the need for the public to know who death row inmates are, particularly at a time when a citizen judge system is to be introduced. Film director Tatsuya Mori said, ''We don't see, and don't want to see, what the death penalty is... and it's this sentiment that brings about the 80 percent support rate,'' he told the symposium. If information on the death penalty and death row inmates is not fully provided, people should not be involved in verdicts, Magazine publisher Hiroyuki Shinoda said. ''It is impossible to compensate if one person kills another,'' Mori said. ''So we need to go back to the basic principle that people should not kill people."