Three death-row inmates received their execution on Tuesday for the first execution in after 2019. Yes, Japan still practices the highly criticized death penalty. All of the inmates were responsible for the murder of different people.
Of the three, the most gruesome crime was committed by the Yasutaka Fujishiro. Back in 2004, he set fire in the victim’s house and killed seven people. The other two inmates, Tomoaki Takanezawa and Mitsunori Onogawa were facing charges for killing two employees at a pinball parlor back in 2003.
The practice in Japan to let the death-row inmates know that they would be hanged only on that same day began in 2007. A couple of months ago, some inmates even sued the government for informing them only hours before their execution. Still, the details for the execution and the crime they commit are kept secret.
Yoshihisa Furukawa, the justice minister of Japan, said in a recent conference that those specific inmates’ crimes were “extremely ghastly” and they deserved the death-row sentence. Strangely, these executions of taking place usually during the holiday when the government offices are on the Christmas break. Now one knows the reason for such timing.
“As justice minister, I authorized their executions after giving extremely careful considerations again and again,” Furukawa said. As of right now, there are more than a hundred (107) individuals waiting for their execution housed at detention centers.
Japan still considers death punishment necessary, saying that the death penalty is given to the criminal considering the victims’ feelings and discouraging anyone else from following the same route. However, in the recent Halloween Tokyo Train attack, the perpetrator dressed as JOKER injured 17 passengers and stabbed an elderly after setting a fire in the running train in hopes of getting the death penalty.
Here comes the question… Did death penalty motivate him to go out of his way to harm others so that he could be executed? There was also another similar attack on a bullet train after a month of the JOKER accident, the criminal wanted to imitate him and tried to set a train on fire, but he could not succeed.
Japan and The USA are the only two countries out of the powerful seven nations with the death penalty. However, according to the defense minister, the survey showed that the majority of the population supports the death sentence in Japan.
Source: CBS News
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