Japan: Efforts continue to achieve hanged killer's final wish

Death chamber at Tokyo Detention Center

Efforts to achieve the final wish of a serial killer continue even 20 years after his execution, with around 200 people gathering for a charity event on Saturday in Tokyo to raise money for underprivileged children.

The main speaker of the event commemorating Norio Nagayama, who was hanged on Aug. 1, 1997, for the murder of four people in 1968 at the age of 19, was Yoshihiro Ishikawa, a psychiatrist.

Based on his experience of performing mental evaluations on Nagayama, Ishikawa said, "He could not develop his personality in the face of multiple posttraumatic stress disorders."

Born into an extremely poor family, Nagayama was abandoned by his mother at age 5, left in a bleak house in the middle of winter. He also had to overcome both an abusive brother and the death of his gambling-addict father whose life ended in destitution.

Despite a patchy school record, he completed his junior high school studies in a rural northeastern town and in 1965 moved to Tokyo at a time when Japan was experiencing an era of high economic growth.

"Nagayama worked hard to change from a miserable boy into someone else," Ishikawa said. "But he could not make friends and fell into loneliness, while his PTSD left him exhausted."

Following his arrest for the serial murders, Nagayama published several books, including a best-selling autobiography "Tears of Ignorance" and an award-winning novel.

He donated his book royalties to some of his victims' bereaved families, and he asked before his death that the royalties would also be used to support poor children around the world.

Responding to the request, his lawyers and volunteers established the Nagayama Children Fund to manage the money and organize a charity event every year around the anniversary of his execution to raise even more money. The first charity event was held in 2004.

Up to 2016, the group had collected more than 21 million yen and distributed it mainly to fund scholarships for children in Peru.

"Nagayama wanted to know why he had been driven to commit the crime through a psychiatric examination so similar crimes would not be repeated, and he was aware of the necessity of providing sufficient education to children," Ishikawa said at the 14th edition of the event. "His last words reflect this wish."

Nagayama was initially sentenced to death, but the Tokyo High Court commuted the ruling to a life sentence, arguing the government should also take some blame for its failure to rescue him from his desperate situation.

Kyoko Otani, his defense lawyer who heads the Nagayama Children Fund, told the event, "I think the high court decision depended on the findings of the psychiatric evaluation by Mr. Ishikawa."

The Supreme Court, however, ordered a retrial, which eventually led the high court to reverse the life imprisonment decision and reinstate the death sentence which was finalized in 1990.

The event was held at a time when debates over Japan's use of the death penalty has drawn public attention, with the hanging of two death-row inmates on July 13 bringing further focus.

One inmate was seeking a retrial while the other withdrew an appeal, filed by his defense lawyers following the first trial.

On the latest executions, Yoshihiro Yasuda, a lawyer leading the campaign against the death penalty, said that the hanging of an inmate seeking a retrial breaches Article 32 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right of access to the court.

"Some former death row inmates were exonerated in postwar Japan after their pleas for retrial had been rejected several times," Yasuda told a recent public gathering in Tokyo. "Executions terminate such a development."

He also emphasized the need to introduce a system under which capital cases are automatically and thoroughly examined at three levels -- lower, high and top courts -- even if the accused no longer wants to fight.

The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has called for the abolition of capital punishment by 2020, given that more than two-thirds of the world's nations have abolished the death penalty by law or in practice.

Source: Japan Today, July 31, 2017

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

Comments

Florida executes Michael Tanzi

Florida on Tuesday executed a death row inmate described by one local detective as a "fledgling serial killer" for the murder of a beloved Miami Herald employee. Florida executed Michael Tanzi on Tuesday, 25 years after the murder of beloved Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta, who was attacked in broad daylight on her lunch break in 2000. Michael Tanzi, 48, was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford and pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET.

South Carolina | Man who ambushed off-duty cop to face firing squad in second execution of its kind

Mikal Mahdi, 48, who was found guilty of killing an off-duty police officer and a convenience store worker, is the second inmate scheduled to executed by South Carolina's new firing squad A murderer who ambushed and shot an off duty police officer eight times before burning his body in a killing spree is set to become the second person to die by firing squad. South Carolina's highest court has rejected the last major appeal from Mikal Mahdi, 41, who is to be put to death with three bullets to the heart at 6pm on April 11 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. Mahdi's lawyers said his original lawyers put on a shallow case trying to spare his life that didn't call on relatives, teachers or people who knew him and ignored the impact of weeks spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teen.

Afghanistan | Four men publicly executed by Taliban with relatives of victims shooting them 'six or seven times' at sport stadium

Four men have been publicly executed by the Taliban, with relatives of their victims shooting them several times in front of spectators at a sport stadium. Two men were shot around six to seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the centre of Afghanistan's Badghis province, witnesses told an AFP journalist in the city. The men had been 'sentenced to retaliatory punishment' for shooting other men, after their cases were 'examined very precisely and repeatedly', the statement said. 'The families of the victims were offered amnesty and peace but they refused.'

South Carolina executes Mikal Mahdi

Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers A man facing the death penalty for committing two murders was executed by firing squad on Friday, the second such execution in the US state of South Carolina this year. Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers, an off-duty police officer, and the murder of a convenience store employee three days earlier. According to a statement from the prison, "the execution was performed by a three-person firing squad at 6:01 pm (2201 GMT)," with Mahdi pronounced dead four minutes later.

Lethal Injection, Electric Chair, or Firing Squad? An Inhumane Decision for Death Row Prisoners

South Carolina resumed executions with the firing squad killing of Brad Sigmon last month. Mikal Madhi’s execution date is days away. The curtain shrieked as it was yanked open to reveal a 67-year-old man tied to a chair. His arms were pulled uncomfortably behind his back. The red bull’s-eye target on his chest rose and fell as he desperately attempted to still his breathing. The man, Brad Sigmon, smiled at his attorney, Bo King, seated in the front row before guards placed a black bag over his head. King said Sigmon appeared to be trying his best to put on a brave face for those who had come to bear witness.

USA | Why the firing squad may be making a comeback

South Carolina plans to execute Mikal Mahdi on Friday for the murder of a police officer, draping a hood over his head and firing three bullets into his heart. The choice to die by firing squad – rather than lethal injection or the electric chair – was Mahdi’s own, his attorney said last month: “Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils.” If it proceeds, Mahdi’s execution would be the latest in a recent string of events that have put the spotlight on the firing squad as a handful of US death penalty states explore alternatives to lethal injection, by far the nation’s dominant execution method.

I spent 16 years in solitary in South Carolina. This is what it did to me. | Opinion

South Carolinian Randy Poindexter writes about the effects 16 years of solitary confinement had on him ahead of South Carolina’s planned execution of Mikal Mahdi , who spent months in solitary as a young man. For 16 years, I lived in a concrete cell. Twenty-three hours a day, every day, for more than 3,000 days, South Carolina kept me in solitary confinement. I was a young man before I was sent to solitary — angry, untreated and unwell. I made mistakes. But I wasn’t sentenced to madness. That’s what solitary did to me. My mental health worsened with each passing day. At first, paranoia and depression set in. Then, hallucinations and self-mutilation. I talked to people who weren’t there. I cut myself to feel something besides despair. I could do nothing as four of my friends and fellow prisoners took their own lives rather than endure another day of torturous isolation.

Louisiana | Lawyers of Jessie Hoffman speak about their final moments before execution

As Louisiana prepared its first execution in 15 years, a team of lawyers from Loyola Law were working to save Jessie Hoffman’s life. “I was a young lawyer three years out of law school, and Jessie was almost finished with his appeals at that time, and my boss told me we needed to file something for Jessie because he’s in danger of being executed,” Kappel said. Kappel and her boss came up with a civil lawsuit to file that said since they wouldn’t give him a protocol for his execution, he was being deprived of due process, and the lawsuit was in the legal process for the next 10 years.

Arizona | The cruelty of isolation: There’s nothing ‘humane’ about how we treat the condemned

On March 19, I served as a witness to the execution of a man named Aaron Gunches, Arizona’s first since 2022. During his time on death row, he begged for death and was ultimately granted what is likely more appropriately described as an emotionless state-assisted suicide. This experience has profoundly impacted me, leading to deep reflection on the nature of death, humanity, and the role we play in our final moments. When someone is in the end stages of life, we talk about hospice care, comfort, care, easing suffering and humane death. We strive for a “good death” — a peaceful transition. I’ve seen good ones, and I’ve seen bad, unplanned ones.

'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.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog