The Death Penalty

It is not widely publicised that Japan still has the death penalty. Three people were hanged there yesterday. One, Tsutomu Miyazaki, was convicted of strangling four children, mutilating them, raping them and drinking their blood. He has shown no remorse for his deeds, and in 1994 his father, out of shame, took his own life.

I suppose this sort of case makes it easier to support the death penalty. I have been against it since the West Midlands police dragged our own system down by forging evidence in the 1980s. You see, if someone is going to be wrongly convicted (or, for that matter, imprisoned without charge for 6 weeks) I always think it might be me.

There is one other aspect. I believe I am correct in saying that in Britain if you had not been hanged within 101 days of final appeal you were reprieved. Miyazaki was arrested in 1989, sentenced in 1997 and hanged in 2008. In America, which also has inmates on death row for long periods, the constitution forbids ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ which surely this is.