Japan recently carried out the death penalty by hanging a Chinese national convicted of the murder of a local family in 2003. Japan currently has 100 prisoners on death row of which 13 members of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult.
It might seem rather bizarre that here we are approaching 2020 and countries still have capital punishment. Australia dispensed with handing out the death penalty in 1967 following the hanging of Ronald Ryan in Victoria.
Capital Punishment Around the World
There are 53 countries including Japan that have capital punishment on the statutes. Amnesty International reports that in 2017, 23 countries carried out at least 993 executions with China holding first spot for executions. It would seem that those countries including the US although not all states, seem entrenched on keeping capital punishment for the worst of the worst of offending.
There will always be those for and against capital punishment with the former considering the death penalty an “eye for an eye” in murder cases and the latter standing on the belief that the taking of a life even though State-sanctioned is wrong.
One of the most powerful to commit the most of theorist offenders to life rather than death are the cases that abound the long after sentencing new evidence emerges leading to an acquittal. While Justice Minister Masako Mori said, the execution proceeded after “after careful consideration”.
