I recently heard about the execution of a man named Shoko Asahara, who was known in Japan for being member of a terrorist group, responsible for an attack in a subway in Tokyo, in 1995. I would like to know why they took so long (23 years, fyi that’s my age lol) to execute him? Should he have got life in prison? Or you think death penalty is what he deserved?

yes, he definetly deserved that

That would require an understanding of Japan's judiciary system, but I'm going to presume it's because of the same reason why death sentences take so long to carry out in the U.S. Presumption of innocence, due process, and the right to appeal.  The alleged has every right to appeal their case and this process takes time to re-examine evidence and this can go through multiple courts before they exhaust all legal options. Terminating a life is not a decision to be made lightly. 

 

Which is why, contrary to popular belief, it's cheaper to keep someone alive than to sentence them to death. 

Edited July 8, 20187 yr by Constable Lego

@Constable Lego Basically, yes, death penalty is more expensive than life sentence, but if you keep someone alive for a long time until he dies (especially if he’s some type of general to some terrorist organization), it’s not guaranteed to be positive. He would have control on his member, even from behind the bars.

In my country, there was one of the most notorious leaders of the Italian Mafia, his name is Salvatore Riina, he was arrested in 1993, he got life sentence and lived until 2017. His 24 years in prison didn’t stop him from controlling his gang, they still operated under his orders. And maybe, I can say that Salvatore Riina did even worse than Shoko Asahara or Charles Manson (I named this last one because it sounds like Asahara is Manson’s Japanese counterpart, at least to me).

So this is the aftermath when you keep alive a criminal who has so much influence over an entire group of people.

I do not necessarily disagree with the death penalty but I'm not going to bother airing my views on a gaming forum. I'm simply pointing out contrary to popular belief, it's cheaper to keep one alive than to execute them. Cost is a common argument for the death penalty.

Edited July 9, 20187 yr by Constable Lego

  There is a whole article and Wikipedia section on his trial, appeals, mental evaluation and more that you can read about.  Basically his lawyers postponed it and some arrests were made that pushed it further out.  He tried to play insane and got caught in a lie.   The execution method is an interesting choice if I may say, considering the society that I live in. 

That's actually a pretty """common""" method of execution throughout the world. Here we kept using the guillotine up until 1977, and then used the same as Japanese up until 1981, date at which when we abolished death penalty altogether. 

On 7/9/2018 at 6:30 AM, Constable Lego said:

I do not necessarily disagree with the death penalty but I'm not going to bother airing my views on a gaming forum. I'm simply pointing out contrary to popular belief, it's cheaper to keep one alive than to execute them. Cost is a common argument for the death penalty.

 

What it comes down to, both methods can be costly.  At least with executions there is a legitimate reason for it being costly - if they are going to kill someone, they need to be damn sure they are killing the right person.  Though that has never stopped innocent people from being executed, but plenty have been on death row and exonerated.  Imagine if the process was immediate, no appeals, no time for the inmate's team to try and prove innocence, just instant death.

17 minutes ago, Giordano said:

 

What it comes down to, both methods can be costly.  At least with executions there is a legitimate reason for it being costly - if they are going to kill someone, they need to be damn sure they are killing the right person.  Though that has never stopped innocent people from being executed, but plenty have been on death row and exonerated.  Imagine if the process was immediate, no appeals, no time for the inmate's team to try and prove innocence, just instant death.

Yes, I imagine. Nope, wait! It's really happening. Somewhere like... Saudi Arabia (NATO allied country, btw).

4 minutes ago, badass22 said:

Yes, I imagine. Nope, wait! It's really happening. Somewhere like... Saudi Arabia (NATO allied country, btw).

 

You know why it happens there and they get away with it? No one gives a shit about Saudi Arabia.  To the average person in civilized, modern countries, Saudi Arabia is just another shit third world country that has no laws.  The people of Saudi Arabia as well as maybe some neighboring areas will be the only ones who really out cry about it.

Death penalty is usually more expensive, there’s always the possibility we’re killing the wrong person (and we do). There’s no evidence to suggest it’s an effective deterrent to crime. 

 

And its not moral. Killing people to show that killing people is wrong makes no sense. 

 

People support the the death penalty because they are emotional. Understandable, but we shouldn’t necessarily base our laws off of emotion.

9 hours ago, Riley24 said:

Death penalty is usually more expensive, there’s always the possibility we’re killing the wrong person (and we do). There’s no evidence to suggest it’s an effective deterrent to crime. 

 

And its not moral. Killing people to show that killing people is wrong makes no sense. 

 

People support the the death penalty because they are emotional. Understandable, but we shouldn’t necessarily base our laws off of emotion.

I agree with you at some point. I mean, what you say is right, as long as the prisoner is willing to get back into society and find a job for himself.

If you talk about someone who is a leader of a terrorist organization, who got into crime since he was 12 y/o, I think his entire life is supposed to be like that. It’s not a matter of being mentally disturbed or just have gotten into an instant moment of pure rampage for grudge against someone. It's a matter of being perfectly sane and just supposed to be evil. 

So I can say it can totally change the way of thinking about how the ending of his life will be like. 

Edited July 10, 20187 yr by badass22

2 minutes ago, badass22 said:

I agree with you at some point. I mean, what you say is right, as long as the prisoner is willing to get back into society and find a job for himself. If you talk about someone who is a leader of a terrorist organization, who got into crime since he was 12 y/o, I think his entire life is supposed to be like that. It’s not a matter of being mentally disturbed or just have gotten into an instant moment of pure rampage for grudge against someone. So I can say it can totally change the way of thinking about how the ending of his life will be like. 

they should exicute Asahara earlier

2 hours ago, Officer GILLETTE ABDI said:

they should exicute Asahara earlier

If it comes to a subject who got death sentence, they definitely have first to check out if he's the right person to execute, this occurs via mutiple courts and overview of the evidences found to prove if he's guilty or not. Imagine what it would happen if someone would be executed instantly without burden of proof. Something like that happened in the USA when two Italians were executed in Boston (1927) for crimes there weren't evidences of about the fact they used to commit.

Anyway, honestly I don't know how the judiciary system works in Japan, same like Constable Lego said.

Edited July 10, 20187 yr by badass22

A former senior member of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult that perpetrated the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 said just moments before his execution last week that he did not foresee such an ending, but remained calm and thanked his parents, an informed source said Friday.

“I didn’t expect things to turn out this way,” Yoshihiro Inoue was quoted as saying shortly before being executed on July 6 along with cult founder Shoko Asahara and five other senior members.

Inoue, 48, was one of Asahara’s closest aides and acted as a general coordinator of the group, which used the nerve agent to attack the subway system in March 1995, killing 13 people and injuring over 6,000. He was sentenced to death in 2004 by the Tokyo High Court and filed an appear for a retrial in March.

Asked by an Osaka detention center officer if he had any messages for his parents, Inoue said, “Thank you, dad and mom. Please don’t worry,” according to the source.

His very last words can be roughly translated as, “It’s a good start.”

On 7/10/2018 at 4:54 PM, Riley24 said:

And its not moral. Killing people to show that killing people is wrong makes no sense. 

 

People support the the death penalty because they are emotional. Understandable, but we shouldn’t necessarily base our laws off of emotion.

I surely hope that death penalty in this day and age is not used to show that killing is wrong. That would be one hell of a way to make an example.

 

Well, I support the death penalty in extreme circumstances when leaving a certain creature alive poses much more danger to other people if it escapes or leaves the prison some other way. Maybe it's not that much problem in American or European prisons any more (didn't hear about any successful prison breaks recently), but in a country like mine you can never trust the penal system. Some 20 the serial rapist, sadist, killer and cannibal (went by the name of 'the Constrictor') literally ran away from the cops while being transported. Took several days to locate him, and they got him minutes away from raping his judge (an elderly lady who he'd promised at the trial he would rape). He got the execution.

 

tl;dr death penalty is cruel for advanced and secure places, I think.

 

2 hours ago, Hastings said:

(didn't hear about any successful prison breaks recently)

 

One occurred pretty recently here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44673753

 

But I still believe that life sentence is preferable over death penalty. First because it shouldn't be our right to decide who can live or die, second because mistakes can happen, both when it comes to convict someone and when executing someone (how many executions have been botchered?), and third because dying sounds a lot more like an easy way out than a life behind bars. It wouldn't take too much effort to make a prison-break-proof facility, would someone be really willing to build one.

On 7/8/2018 at 6:42 PM, Officer GILLETTE ABDI said:

yes, he definetly deserved that

Well, I personally don't like the idea of the death penalty, I mean, I wouldn't say that it is a good thing to kill someone for a crime he committed.

11 hours ago, Hystery said:

 

One occurred pretty recently here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44673753

 

But I still believe that life sentence is preferable over death penalty. First because it shouldn't be our right to decide who can live or die, second because mistakes can happen, both when it comes to convict someone and when executing someone (how many executions have been botchered?), and third because dying sounds a lot more like an easy way out than a life behind bars. It wouldn't take too much effort to make a prison-break-proof facility, would someone be really willing to build one.

Can't argue with that, all I'm saying is that some countries can't yet afford the luxury of being humane. One day we'll be there too.

4 hours ago, Hastings said:

Can't argue with that, all I'm saying is that some countries can't yet afford the luxury of being humane. One day we'll be there too.

 

Oh yeah I wasn't really arguing your point, I just quoted you for the prison break part and the one that occurred here.