Letter from Gunma

[Editor’s Note: Japan is one of the two major industrialized democracies that still executes its citizens for crimes. With few exceptions, its death penalty is reserved for multiple murders. Execution in Japan is by hanging. It is carried out in secret by ordinary prison guards who may have known the prisoner for years. Prisoners are not told the time of their death until hours before, and families informed only afterwards.

Kazuhiko Higuchi, author of this reverie on the death penalty, is a criminal defense lawyer whose practice is in Gunma Prefecture. He was moved to write when, two years ago, four inmates were slaughtered within eight days in the same jurisdiction, suffering lingered and convulsive deaths by lethal injection, by the other major industrialized nation that kills its own, the United States of America.]

Should death penalty be maintained or abolished?

Arkansas executed four death-row inmates in eight days this April [2017] because the executions were necessary before one of their drugs expired. It was the first execution in these 12 years.

Death penalty is a hot topic in US.

So, let’s discuss death penalty.

1. Death penalty is one of criminal punishments.

Is a death penalty system suitable for the purpose of criminal punishment?

There are some theories about criminal punishment.

1) Discouragement or threatening of people not to commit crimes (general deterrence)

Evidence:

31:19

1972: Furman v. Georgia—40 statutes became invalid [The U.S. Supreme Court held that imposition of the death penalty in Furman, and two other death penalty cases decided at the same time, constituted cruel and unusual punishment, and were therefore unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment.]

1976: Gregg v. Georgia [The U.S. Supreme Court held that the death penalty, with “careful and judicious” use, does not violate the Constitution and may, as Georgia claimed, serve as a useful deterrent to future capital crimes.]

2) Intimidation or threatening of individuals not to commit another crime (specific deterrence)

Impossible to intimidate a dead person — exceeding the purpose.

3) Isolation, incapacitation

Life in prison without parole (being release if the prisoner behaved so well in a prison under some conditions) — exceeding the purpose.

4) Rehabilitation

It’s impossible to rehabilitate a dead man.

5) Responsibility(retributivism)

Not revenge.

Not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

In modern cultures, it is considered creepy and cruel to cut off a criminal’s arm when he or she cut off his victim’s arm.

If it is impermissible to cut off one’s arm as a criminal punishment, why is it permissible to cut off one’s life?

2. There are some defects in a death penalty system.

1) It is unable to be canceled and unrecoverable, when a wrongful conviction is discovered.

2) The cost of death penalty is more expensive than other punishments.

3) There is much more possibility for the poor and minority to be sentenced to death.

Disparity, inequality.

In San Francisco, only about 6% is black and half of the city’s inmates are black.

The chances of execution are by far the greatest when blacks kill whites and the least when whites kill blacks.

3. Conclusion

Considering the purposes of criminal punishments and the defects of death penalties, the system of death penalty should be and could be abolished.