Japan hangs death-row inmate for fatally stabbing 3 people

Execution chamber and main gallows
at Tokyo Detention Center

TOKYO — Japan carried out its first execution of the year on Thursday when it hanged a man for a triple murder, the ninth prisoner to be put to death since the conservative government of Shinzo Abe took power in 2012.

Masanori Kawasaki, 68, was convicted of stabbing three people to death—including a three-year-old girl—as they slept, after breaking into their house in Kagawa, western Japan, in 2007.

“It was an extremely cruel case,” Justice Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki told reporters. “I ordered the execution after prudent consideration.”

Apart from the United States, Japan is the only major industrialised democracy to use capital punishment.

Surveys have shown the death penalty has overwhelming public support, despite repeated protests from European governments and human rights groups.

The government did not execute anyone in 2011, the first full year in nearly two decades without an execution amid muted debate on the rights and wrongs of the practice.

But in March 2012, it abruptly resumed its use of capital punishment, dispatching three multiple murderers.

International advocacy groups say Japan’s system is cruel because inmates can wait for their executions for many years in solitary confinement and are only told of their impending death a few hours ahead of time.

“Death row inmates live under the constant fear of execution, never knowing from one day (to) the next if they are going to be put to death,” said Roseann Rife, East Asia Research Director at Amnesty International.

“This adds psychological torture to an already cruel and inhumane punishment,” she said in a statement.

There have been a number of high-profile miscarriages of justice exposed in recent years, including the case of Iwao Hakamada, who was released from jail in March, aged 78, after decades on death row for a multiple murder he did not commit.

Hakamada, who was believed to be the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, was the victim of a flawed investigation in which evidence was fabricated.

Tanigaki said he acknowledged anti-execution calls based on concerns over wrongful convictions, including the Hakamada case.

“It is natural that considering if the death-row prisoner actually committed the crime is the most important factor,” Tanigaki said, according to Japan’s public broadcaster NHK.

Justice ministry figures show Japan now has 129 inmates on death row, although the number still includes Hakamada, pending a technical decision on a retrial.

Source: Agence France-Presse, June 26, 2014

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Dhaka, Bangladesh – Lesedi Molapisi, a Botswana national convicted of drug trafficking, was executed in Bangladesh on Friday, 21 March 2025. The 31-year-old was hanged at Dhaka Central Jail after exhausting all legal avenues to appeal her death sentence. Molapisi was arrested in January 2023 upon arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, where customs officials discovered 3.1 kilograms of heroin hidden in her luggage. Following a trial under Bangladesh’s Narcotics Control Act, she was sentenced to death in May 2024. Her execution was initially delayed due to political unrest in the country but was carried out last week.

Louisiana's First Nitrogen Execution Reflects Broader Method Shift

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Louisiana executes Jessie Hoffman Jr.

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Florida executes Edward James

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Supreme Court rejects appeal from Texas death row inmate

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(RNS) — When 67-year-old Brad Sigmon was put to death on March 7 in South Carolina for the murder of his then-girlfriend's parents, it was the first time in 15 years that an execution in the United States had been carried out by a firing squad. United Methodist minister Hillary Taylor, Sigmon's spiritual adviser since 2020, said the multifaceted, months long effort to save Sigmon's life, and to provide emotional and spiritual support for his legal team, and the aftermath of his execution has been a "whirlwind" said Taylor, the director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Texas Death Row chef who cook for hundreds of inmates explained why he refused to serve one last meal

Brian Price would earn the title after 11 years cooking for the condemned In the unlikely scenario that you ever find yourself on Death Row, approaching your final days as a condemned man, what would you request for your final meal? Would you push the boat out and request a full steal dinner or play it safe and opt for a classic dish such as pizza or a burger? For most of us it's something that we'll never have to think about, but for one man who spent over a decade working as a 'Death Row chef' encountering prisoner's final requests wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

'No Warning': The Death Penalty In Japan

Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite criticism over how it is carried out. Tokyo: Capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny again after the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamada, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation this week following his acquittal last year in a retrial. Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite international criticism over how it is carried out.

South Carolina plans to carry out a firing squad execution. Is it safe for witnesses?

South Carolina plans to execute a man by firing squad on March 7, the first such execution in the state and the first in the nation in 15 years. But firearms experts are questioning whether South Carolina's indoor execution setup is safe for the workers who will shoot the prisoner and the people who will watch. Photos released by the South Carolina Department of Corrections show that the state intends to strap the prisoner, Brad Sigmon, to a metal seat in the same small, indoor brick death chamber where South Carolina has executed more than 40 other prisoners by electric chair and lethal injection since 1985.

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