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Nemo_N wrote:

I have no sympathy for murderers but I oppose the death penalty on the basis of human imperfection; no system is perfect and someone innocent is going to be (and most likely, already has been) executed due to a failure in the system.

I prefer non-irreversible (but no less severe) methods of punishment.

I disagree with total opposition to the death penalty but I do agree that it must be imposed only in cases where the evidence is strongest and where the criminal poses a general threat to society.

Like this lunatic Kato for example. He's been identified to such a degree that I think it would be unreasonable to consider it anything but nearly certain. His actions were also quite unspecific in terms of individual targets. He wasn't acting out of a specific grudge against any one in particular, he was just killing and maiming more or less for giggles.

In a case where the evidence was more circumstantial or the identification less certain, I'd say impose a less permanent punishment. The same would be my position if the murderer chose targets for highly personal/very specific and rational reasons. (Bare in mind, I use the term rational here only to mean that the reasons make sense not that they are appropriate.) For instance, a murder commited because someone cheated someone out of an inheritance or someone was constantly making fun of them. The reason for the crime isn't sufficent and the response is disproportionate to the stimuli but it makes sense that someone would be angry about what was done to them.

The state should only kill a citizen when it's very sure it has the right one and for the protection of the people as a whole. Here I think you have a rather text book case for the death penalty. The chances that they have the wrong person are virtually non-existent (I'd even feel comfortable saying there is no chance they have the wrong person) and he clearly has issues with too broad a portion of humanity to risk him ever getting out again.

The whole crime was just so pointless and what motivation he does claim only shows how without a real target his murderous rampage was. If he told the truth, it would amount to "well, I think I'm better than everyone else and those people displeased me so I killed them."

I don't know about the taxpayers of Japan but I'd be more than willing to foot my share of the bill for this execution. Drug addicts in prison? Debtors in prison? A whole lot of the mala prohibita stuff would not be on my list for prison time.

This waste of human meat? Meh, sharpen some fast growing bamboo and stake him out over it. I hear that works well and it's cheap.

boznia wrote:

Our overflowing prisons have more to do with strict anti-drug laws than murders.

Of course. We all love to have them druggies living next door rather than prisons. Know a good solution you could pass on to your president? Build a druggie state/island, legalize drugs, but restrict it to only government officials and card payments (to avoid corruption).

egoist wrote:

boznia wrote:

Our overflowing prisons have more to do with strict anti-drug laws than murders.

Of course. We all love to have them druggies living next door rather than prisons. Know a good solution you could pass on to your president? Build a druggie state/island, legalize drugs, but restrict it to only government officials and card payments (to avoid corruption).

What are going on about? All I said was that the reason we have crowded prisons has more to do with strict drug laws than murders. I never said whether I agree with the laws or not, since it wasn't relevant (and isn't now).

oh, good riddance. The Akihabara killing was a tragedy. I hope the guy get what he deserve. It's rare to see these type of tragedy in Japan.

egoist wrote:

TJ_Kat wrote:

not a very good argument since it actually costs the taxpayers MORE (at least in the us, thanks to the appeal process) when someone is sentenced to death then it would to leave them in prison for the rest of their life.

But the message it delivers to future criminals is countless times more effective. I'm amazed that despite having overflowing prisons, you guys still preach such logic and humanity.

Not if the one executed is innocent.

Unless "sending a message" is worth an innocent person's life.

Last edited by Nemo_N on Thu Mar 24, 2011 12:39 pm; edited 1 time in total

Richard J. wrote:

Nemo_N wrote:

I have no sympathy for murderers but I oppose the death penalty on the basis of human imperfection; no system is perfect and someone innocent is going to be (and most likely, already has been) executed due to a failure in the system.

I prefer non-irreversible (but no less severe) methods of punishment.

Like this lunatic Kato for example. He's been identified to such a degree that I think it would be unreasonable to consider it anything but nearly certain. His actions were also quite unspecific in terms of individual targets. He wasn't acting out of a specific grudge against any one in particular, he was just killing and maiming more or less for giggles.

In a case where the evidence was more circumstantial or the identification less certain, I'd say impose a less permanent punishment. The same would be my position if the murderer chose targets for highly personal/very specific and rational reasons. (Bare in mind, I use the term rational here only to mean that the reasons make sense not that they are appropriate.) For instance, a murder commited because someone cheated someone out of an inheritance or someone was constantly making fun of them. The reason for the crime isn't sufficent and the response is disproportionate to the stimuli but it makes sense that someone would be angry about what was done to them.

The state should only kill a citizen when it's very sure it has the right one and for the protection of the people as a whole. Here I think you have a rather text book case for the death penalty. The chances that they have the wrong person are virtually non-existent (I'd even feel comfortable saying there is no chance they have the wrong person) and he clearly has issues with too broad a portion of humanity to risk him ever getting out again.

The whole crime was just so pointless and what motivation he does claim only shows how without a real target his murderous rampage was. If he told the truth, it would amount to "well, I think I'm better than everyone else and those people displeased me so I killed them."

This line of reasoning relies heavily on trusting that a group of human beings, or at least most of them, will be able (or willing) to rely on hard evidence. All you need is to present a sympathetic victim (a child raped and murdered) and an unsavory character as the accused (a druggie foreigner with a history of assaults) and all bets are off. I'm all for hard evidence, but humans are not computers and their biases and gut-feelings are very likely to overtake them.

Moreso, this is not about the guilty ones; it's about the innocent ones. I, personally, can't delude myself into thinking that all outcomes of all death penalty cases will be (or were) correct and hence I can't let the thought of one certain conviction make me ignore the innocent ones.

CruzMissile wrote:

Japan's death sentences are usually carried out in secret, by hanging.

However, he could be on death row for quite a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Japan

And they don't even tell the condemned or the relatives until a day or two before the date of execution, so nobody knows when.

Nemo_N wrote:

Not if the one executed is innocent.

Jesus already paid for our sins. Technically we're all innocent.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, though I will say that Japan's death penalty practices-- such as sometimes informing the family *after* the execution, as happened at least once while I was living there-- are a little odd.
But still. He doesn't deserve better.

egoist wrote:

Nemo_N wrote:

Not if the one executed is innocent.

Jesus already paid for our sins. Technically we're all innocent.

Wh... at....

Innocent is innocent. Guilty is guilty. A person is either one or the other and it is possible that innocent people could get accidentally executed.

In this case, however, the man was clearly guilty of the mass murder. Whether that means he should be executed or not is something I'm not sure about, but at the very least he must be completely separated from society for the rest of his life. He is technically guilty.

Josh7289 wrote:

egoist wrote:

Nemo_N wrote:

Not if the one executed is innocent.

Jesus already paid for our sins. Technically we're all innocent.

Wh... at....

Innocent is innocent. Guilty is guilty. A person is either one or the other and it is possible that innocent people could get accidentally executed.

In this case, however, the man was clearly guilty of the mass murder. Whether that means he should be executed or not is something I'm not sure about, but at the very least he must be completely separated from society for the rest of his life. He is technically guilty.

I agree with the general consensus that the death penalty should only be reserved for rare cases and the most dangerous of criminals where irrefutable evidence is shown that they are guilty of their crimes (such as security footage or pictures of him actually committing the crime, etc,.).

I've seen a lot of cases where people went to jail for years for a crime they didn't commit. These aren't things that just happen on TV or in isolated cases. More recently, up here in Canada for instance, there were numerous innocent people who were sent to jail for decades because of a prominent pathologist who gave false and irresponsible testimony throughout his career spanning from 1982-2003. He was only found out in 2008. Imagine if we had a death penalty. Some of these people his inaccurate testimonies put away might be dead by now.

bravetailor wrote:

More recently, up here in Canada for instance, there were numerous innocent people who were sent to jail for decades because of a prominent pathologist who gave false and irresponsible testimony throughout his career spanning from 1982-2003. He was only found out in 2008. Imagine if we had a death penalty. Some of these people his inaccurate testimonies put away might be dead by now.

Yet even though we don't have the death penalty, some of these people have had their lives destroyed by being left to rot in prison for up to 26 years. Sure, we can let them out now but we can hardly give them back all that time any more than we can bring someone who was executed back to life. Of course, that's also to say nothing of the many people who are wrongly convicted and are not ever proven innocent and released. Realistically there are probably far more people like that than those who get out. It's a truly tragic fact that our justice system is woefully imperfect. I don't think it follows however that we cannot risk sticking someone with the harshest penalty, death, just because it's irreversible. If we're going to punish people at all then we inherently risk punishing the innocent. Being without that slight outside shot that an innocent person might at some point be freed, lessening their undue punishment somewhat, does not make the death penalty significantly different from other punishments.

ikillchicken wrote:

Yet even though we don't have the death penalty, some of these people have had their lives destroyed by being left to rot in prison for up to 26 years. Sure, we can let them out now but we can hardly give them back all that time any more than we can bring someone who was executed back to life. Of course, that's also to say nothing of the many people who are wrongly convicted and are not ever proven innocent and released. Realistically there are probably far more people like that than those who get out. It's a truly tragic fact that our justice system is woefully imperfect. I don't think it follows however that we cannot risk sticking someone with the harshest penalty, death, just because it's irreversible. If we're going to punish people at all then we inherently risk punishing the innocent.

I, personally, am not willing to take the chance of killing someone innocent (and hence, letting one guilty person stay free) in the name of harshness.

Score one for Justice.

It seems pretty clear that Kato is guilty. I feel sorry for the families who lost their loved ones as a result of his actions.

I agree with others that the death penalty ought to be reserved for special cases of irrefutable guilt, such as this. From my understanding, there already exists a pretty bad track record of sentencing and executing innocent people for crimes they didn't commit. If I lost an innocent loved one who had been in such manner unjustly convicted and executed, I know I wouldn't think the death penalty system was worth it.

I'm rather doubtful that execution proves to be a necessarily effective deterrent for crimes such as this anyways. I imagine these kinds of hysterical psycho killers have no value for life in the first place, let alone their own. The ramifications of their actions are, more likely than not, not even figuring into their thought processes, and so the chances that future killers will commit similar offenses are little diminished.

Of course, the death penalty does effectively prevent murderers from repeat offenses, though it comes at a significant fiscal expense to taxpayers comparative to life imprisonment. For the affected families I imagine it proves a wholly commensurate punishment against their personal losses, though on those lines between bitter revenge and just retribution the chances for compromising our better judgments are intensified. If there aren't yet any underway, I'm sure there's research somewhere that could shed some light on the subject.

As for the U.S. prison system, my understanding is that it serves as quite a profitable cash cow for independent contracting firms, accounting for a significant portion of tax expenditures. That so many people are imprisoned isn't quite a coincidence when legislators are tacitly rewarding businesses and well-connected law enforcement officials with lucrative deals, whilst simultaneously enforcing a punitive instead of reformative system, not to mention drafting laws which encourage an increasingly unbalanced social stratification and culture identities propitious to that end. In retrospect, it may be a side-effect of that so-called "capitalism gone wild", thought it yet remains to be seen.

Forum - View topicNEWS: Tomohiro Katō Sentenced to Death for Akihabara Killings

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NEWS: Tomohiro Katō Sentenced to Death for Akihabara Killings