Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The Japanese Way of Capital Punishment...

This BBC article about the recent execution of two murderers gave me a few thoughts.

"Ms Chiba (the Justice Minister and an opponent of the death penalty) said that as justice minister she believed it was her duty to witness the executions in person."

Good. I wonder if she considers it her duty to go to homicide scenes, autopsies, and notification of families of murder victims?

"Prisoners are not told when they will be executed and their relatives are told only after the sentence has been carried out."

Exactly like the people they killed. Seems fair.

(Sorry, up all night on a murder.)

3 comments:

Barbara said...

No need to apologize, but you shouldn't be committing murders at night

staghounds said...

What better time?

Windy Wilson said...

"'Prisoners are not told when they will be executed and their relatives are told only after the sentence has been carried out.'

Exactly like the people they killed. Seems fair."

Back when France was not known as the surrender capital of the world, a convicted murderer not only did not know the hour of his death, he would be woken from a sound sleep and hustled out to the guillotine in the predawn hours to be permanently shortened while still groggy from the sudden awakening. It was believed that this was more humane than letting him count the days and hours to the time when he would be deprived of that part of him that caused so much trouble for so many people.
Nowadays, of course, you can murder your girlfriend and stuff her into a trunk and live for decades in France with no one there seeking to have you pay for the crime, because they now suffer murderers to live.