2014: Masanori Kawasaki
June 26th, 2014 Headsman
Japan is in the news this morning for the surprise hanging of 68-year-old Masanori Kawasaki.
Kawasaki stabbed to death his sister-in-law Keiko Miura and her two granddaughters in 2007.
“It was an extremely cruel case,” Justice Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said in announcing the execution.
Nevertheless, every execution no matter the circumstances of the crime draws controversy in Japan, which only hangs a handful of inmates in a typical year* and many of them only after very long waits. (At under seven years from stab to rope, Kawasaki’s was very fast by Japanese standards.)
Japan’s death penalty is distinguished — apart from the very fact of its existence, which makes it the only G8 country besides the United States to boast an active death chamber — by hangings conducted without prior announcement. Once a prisoner’s final appeals are turned down (Kawasaki’s were rejected in 2012) he can essentially be executed at any time the Justice Minister signs off, and have no more warning than the hour it takes to dash off final letters and final prayers. The condemned must acclimate day by day to the continual haunts of a capricious death that might snatch them at any moment.
Amnesty International can’t be far from the mark in the response issued by its East Asia Research Director to Kawasaki’s hanging: “Death row inmates live under the constant fear of execution, never knowing from one day or the next if they are going to be put to death. This is adds psychological torture to an already cruel and inhumane punishment.”
Another Japanese death row inmate, Shigeo Okazaki, also died this June 26 of 2014. He suffered respiratory failure.
* Kawasaki’s was the first hanging of 2014.
On this day..
- 1919: John Hartfield lynched - 2020
- 1978: Salim Rubai Ali, President of South Yemen - 2019
- 1685: Richard Rumbold, owner of the Rye House - 2018
- 1917: Dragutin "Apis" Dimitrijevic, of the Black Hand - 2017
- 925: Feast Day of St. Pelagius - 2016
- 1621: Christenze Kruckow, philanthropic witch - 2015
- 1668: A Dutch suicide, posthumously gibbeted - 2013
- 1943: Marianne Elise Kurchner condemned for a joke - 2012
- 1944: Krystyna Wituska, thanks to a bad romance - 2011
- 1885: James Arcene, the youngest juvenile offender hanged in the US? - 2010
- 1574: Gabriel de Lorges, accidental regicide - 2009
- 1979: Two former dictators of Ghana with four of their aides - 2008
Entry Filed under: 21st Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Hanged,Japan,Murder,Ripped from the Headlines
Tags: 2010s, 2014, june 26, literally executed today, masanori kawasaki, sadakazu tanigaki
RIP. The death penalty is always terrible, this “at any moment” factor especially so. Abolish it!
What is the reason behind this delay and then instant execution? It is obviously a conscious decision by all governments, is there anything that explains the theory behind it?