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Why Japan and US Should Eliminate the Death Penalty
Japan’s decision to hang three prisoners after nearly two years without executions has been severely criticized by Amnesty International, which calls it a “retrograde step.” Justice Minister Toshio Ogawa authorized the executions of three men, stating that this was his “duty” as Minister. “Justifying acts which violate human rights as a ‘Minister’s duty’ is unacceptable. Rather, it is the responsibility of leaders to address crime without resorting to the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment,” said Catherine Baber, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Deputy Director.
A Texas death chamber. The United States ranks fifth in executions according to Amnesty International's annual death penalty report. (photo: Getty Images)
In the Group of Eight leading economies only Japan and the U.S. carry out the death penalty. Capital punishment has a long history in Japan. In the fourth century, under the influence of the Chinese judicial system, Japan adopted a system of different punishments for different crimes, including the death penalty. During the Muromachi period which run from 1337 to 1573 extremely cruel methods of execution were used. Among those were methods were upside down crucifixion, impalement by spear, sawing, and dismemberment with oxen or carts.
In 1871, following a major reform of the penal code, the list of the kind of crimes that were punishable by death was reduced and cruel torture and flogging were abolished. In 1873, the list of crimes punished by execution was further reduced and methods of execution were limited to beheading or hanging.
Presently, the typical stay of prisoners on death row is between five and seven years. For some, however, this period is much longer. A prisoner, Sadamichi Hirasawa, died of natural causes at the age of 95, after being in death row for 32 years. According to Kyodo, a Japanese news agency, there are 132 death row inmates in Japan.
There has been considerable debate in Japan about the death penalty, and the public has overwhelmingly supported it. In the late 1980s, four high-profile acquittals of death-row inmates after retrial shook public confidence on this measure. This case “shook public confidence in the system and profoundly embarrassed the Ministry of Justice, which until then had believed that the execution of an innocent person was all but impossible,” stated Charles Lane, a reporter for The Washington Post who studied the Japanese criminal justice system.
However, a government survey in 1999 showed that 79.3 percent of the public supported this measure. At a 2003 trial in Tokyo, a prosecutor presented the court a petition with 76,000 signatures requesting the death sentence on his case. A 2009 government survey showed that 86 percent of the public in Japan supported the death penalty.
In the United States, there have been 1289 execution since 1976, most of them by lethal injection. In 34 states, the death penalty is legal, and in 16 states it has been abolished. In the U.S., over 130 people have been released from death row after their innocence was proved.
Both in the case of Japan and the U.S., there is the widespread perception that the death penalty can be a deterrent to further crimes. However, according to a 2009 study conducted by Professor Michael Radelet and Tracy Lacock, both at the University of Colorado-Boulder, 88% of the country’s top criminologists do not believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicides.
In addition, 87% of leading criminologists think that abolition of the death penalty would not have any significant effect on murder rates. More pointedly, 75% of the respondents believe that “debates about the death penalty distract Congress and state legislatures from focusing on real solutions to crime problems.”
All European countries except Russia, Belarus, Serbia and Latvia have abolished capital punishment. According to Amnesty International, 95 countries, including Canada and Australia, have abolished the death penalty, while nine other countries have it reserved only for extraordinary cases of espionage or treason. It is now time for Japan and the US to heed Amnesty International’s suggestion and join the more than two-thirds of countries worldwide who have abolished the death penalty in law or practice, and declare a moratorium on executions as a first step toward abolition.
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12 Comments so far
Show AllWhy is it US religious institutions support the death penalty and until that changes nothing will change....the Catholic church is the only religion opposed to the death penalty.
Wrong. Many bishops and archbishops support the death penalty. Here in Colorado, the Catholic hierarchy not only has supported the death penalty, but has honored Catholic death penalty proponents such as former governor Bill Ritter (and former elected district attorney in Denver and a rabid proponent of the death penalty for minorities.)
We humans talk about justice but haven't yet really got a handle on it and do not IMO practice it. Therefore, we definitely should not take a human life for the purpose of exacting 'justice'. The point should be to stop whatever crime a person has perpetrated and may do again. There are usually a variety of ways to do this without killing them outright.
Certainly a dead person will no longer do whatever they may have done in the past, but the 'justice' of it does not bring back murder victims or erase the effects of the crimes committed. The thought that some receiving the death penalty are actually innocent should bring horror to us all. I don't think Old Testament practices belong in our modern age.
The 130 death row inmates found innocent does not reflect the actual number who may be innocent because there is no program to re-examine all such cases - often DNA and other evidence is unavailable, and the justice system we use has a vested interest in appearing to have solved crimes whether a correct outcome was obtained or not.
We humans do not actually feel each other's pain; empathy is mental, not physical, but I'd like to think that as we mature and evolve, we will increase our empathy and understanding while the childish enjoyment of spectacle and the disregard for the welfare of others is phased out.
The most disgusting death penalty I heard of was impaling a person rectally on a huge post.
Used a huge hoist to lower the person down. I think that is where Vlad the Impaler name came from.
Americans are pro life, but pro war, pro death penalty. Do not want to see universal health care, take exemption to any social program designed to help lower income people have a decent quality of life.
And the US is called a Christian Nation. Jesus was a socialist, but many decry Socialism and call themselves Christians.
Amazing.
It should be noted that Japan has one of the cruelest prison systems in the world. With a 99% conviction rate, inmates are subjected to cruel and inhumane conditions such as beatings, no sitting during daytime hours, being hooded anytime a prisoner leaves his cell, no speaking allowed, military drills, no parole and tiny, spartan cells. The only advantage of a Japanese prison over a US prison is the absence of fear from other inmates.
The public in Japan is conned like Americans in which the majority believe the system is set up in a way that allows guilty individuals to go free regularly (ever watch the TV show Law & Order?) and that sentences are generally too light. Japan's neighbor to the West, South Korea, currently has a moratorium on the death penalty only because the government wanted their former Minister of Justice, Ban Ki Moon, to be selected as the UN Secretary General. Yet after Ban Ki Moon's term expires, it is expected that South Korea will also return to executing prisoners.
Even America's worst criminals (the CEO's of corporations who never even get charged) should not die at the hands of the State. Prisons should never be run by private-for-profit companies, rent out inmates to corporations for work or used as a cheap form of housing for societies poor. All of these practices though are in use today and is why more advanced societies than the U.S. consider America to be such a barbaric society. Empathy, after all, has been in short supply on this side of the Atlantic for quite some time.
The Japanese, like white Christian Americans, have a long history of extreme cruelty. Both countries maintain the death penalty in honor of their cruel pasts and to remind the lesser members of society not to rise up.
White Americans used to lock black men in cages hung in trees until the birds ate their eyes and they died of exposure and thirst. And much, much worse.
Please share your source for this treatment.
The death penalty is somewhat merciful compared to life in prison without possibility of parole. The idea of caging someone in a confined space without hope or relief from the stulifying daily monotony and constant fear of violence is truly cruel and unusual punishment. In capital cases, I believe a convict should at least be given the option to choose death over life imprisonment.
What's your position on a woman's right to choose?
Why wouldn't a woman have the same ability to choose between death and life in prison?
"In the Group of Eight leading economies only Japan and the U.S. carry out the death penalty"
These memes "Group of Eight" and "leading ekonomies" are supposed to excite our egos, and kultivate our reverence toward das ego akkomplishments. But all people worldwide are now learning to identify the human ego in elite agendas, and learning to reject it. This is the big news of the day. Notice that the death penalty and all the rest of Merkan regression cannot stand when we extinguish our flaming reverence toward das ego akkomplishments - das inflamed ekonomy, das petro-fried kulture of material gluttony, mind-manipulated mastery/slavery. The people are coming to see it all clearly.
"In the fourth century, under the influence of the Chinese judicial system, Japan adopted a system of different punishments for different crimes, including the death penalty"
That is all historical, for amusement purposes. It provides no guidance for the people today. The people worldwide are reaching for their nirvana now. There are no historical precedents for this, the main event, because the elites never recorded them. And the people don't need precedents because our guidance comes from within. This is the big news of the day. Exciting times for the people. Not so exciting for elites.