It doesn't for me. But I also don't think having a thirst for revenge when you're not directly personally afflicted is a healthy attitude.
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Japan executed the leader of Aum Shinrikyo (cult behind the 1995 sarin gas attack)
- Thread starter AuthenticM
- Start date
It doesn't for me. But I also don't think having a thirst for revenge when you're not directly personally afflicted is a healthy attitude.
Eh, if he actually still posed a danger, he could have remained in isolation.
So long as the death penalty exists innocent people will be executed. If you're fine with that then cool, but life in prison accomplishes the same thing (dangerous person permanently removed from society) without the risk of killing an innocent person. If you think a few innocent people dying is worth killing some guilty people then that's your opinion, but don't act like every single death penalty case in the history of the world was 100% cut and dry, because that's not how the real world works.
I agree 100%. The justice system will never be perfect but at least if an innocent person is put behind bars they'll have a chance of one day being free again, except not at all if you kill them. And let's not pretend like "innocent man release from prison after X amount of years" isn't a common headline these days.
He could have. If not executed that should have been the only alternative.
I didn't know about this until today and just read up on it. Man, what a fucking story. How scary it must have been to be around after that first attack, I can only wonder. Just waiting for something worse to show up in the news every day... gives me chills.
That's not true. While in general that is the purpose (which I agree with, purpose should generally be rehabilitation), but for people like Breivek, they have 21 years that will be continuously upheld for his life. So he will stay in prison isolated until he dies.
If you're interested in learning more about the attack/cult, Haruki Murakami's Underground is a super interesting book with interviews of people affected and members of the cult.
I highly recommend y'all give a listen to the 4-part series that Last Podcast on the Left did on this cult and it's leader - it's a fucking crazy story.
Of those on death row, it includes members involved with the Sakamoto family murders.
I can't find who else was executed today specifically besides Asahara
I can't find who else was executed today specifically besides Asahara
And I would say that only caring about the consequences brought on by a mass murderer when it 'directly afflicts you' isn't very healthy and shows a lack of empathy for the victims.
Kind of ironic considering what you are arguing here.
And it's not really about revenge. This man managed to brainwash people into an apocalyptic cult and coerce them into a mass murder plot.
The world is better off without him.
Like I said, I agree that in most cases the way Norway treats its criminals is the way to go.
However, let's not even pretend that the situation with Breivek is anywhere close to Shoko Asahara.
Breivek was a crazy individual who acted on his own.
Asahara is a man who managed to brainwash thousands to his cause and is much more dangerous even behind bars just because of his influence.
Ah, so society is better if we only care about what directly affects us then? No wonder things are like they are then.
Please, this isn't a case of a poor guy getting railroaded with little to no actual evidence. I can see being against the death penalty most of the time, but when you have definitive, 100% proof of mass murderers that show no remorse and continue to harm others while leading / promoting others to commit similar crimes how does society benefit from keeping those people around?
Are you sure they stopped? Just in the last few years:
NXIVM
Oath Keepers
the Alex Jones/Infowars racket
If we lived in a world where only people who were 100% guilty were being put to death then I'd be okay with the death penalty. But that's not how the real world works. So long as guilty criminals like Shoko Asahara are being put to death it's only a matter of time before an innocent person is executed. You can't just look at cases like this in a vacuum and ignore real life incidents of posthumous exoneration. Or maybe you can. Maybe you're fine with a few dead innocent people if it means guys like this are killed too. I personally am not okay with that, but that's just my opinion.
My personal sense of justice requires this man to hang.
Also aware that some disenfranchized, dangerous crazies out there will now consider him a martyr.
Tough one. On balance would have let him rot in jail while his apocalypse never comes.
Also aware that some disenfranchized, dangerous crazies out there will now consider him a martyr.
Tough one. On balance would have let him rot in jail while his apocalypse never comes.
I'm not a fan of capitol punishment, but given how much of a massive piece of shit the guy was I won't shed a tear. The world is a lot better off without him and that cult.
No idea how you are getting this from what I said. If you're going to deliberately misquote and inject your own assumptions then feel free to not reply to me at all. I would still like to know from others what is the benefit to keeping around people around like this guy and other mass murderers that are 100%, without a shadow of a doubt guilty.
I can't wait until Trump and the GOP are categorized as a terrorist cult.
They all belong in prison at least.
They all belong in prison at least.
Reminder that had the sarin that they used been as pure as they wanted it to be and if they didn't have a deadline from the police raid, they would have tried to kill at least 4 million people.
Fuck this guy, from literally blackmailing the blind so they don't get abandoned, to leading a cult that he of course did not have to follow any of the rule. He didn't have a single good bone in his body.
Fuck this guy, from literally blackmailing the blind so they don't get abandoned, to leading a cult that he of course did not have to follow any of the rule. He didn't have a single good bone in his body.
yeah, it could of easily been the deadliest attack ever because of how it was planned
the sarin stuck to peoples clothes as they traveled and even made people in office buildings sick
Stop arguing in bad faith. You see my full posting. I said when it comes to the specific topic of revenge feelings, only those directly afflicted should have them. That's why we have independent judges who follow law. If you punished criminals based on the feelings of the victim ('s relatives), you'd be handing out death penalties everyday. Fortunately, we don't let those directly afflicted do the judging - which would be impossible, if everybody acted like those personally afflicted.
Yeah, except you don't get to tell people how to feel.
It's extremely off-putting that you start the topic off by basically feeling empathy for an unabashed mass murderer, but then tell people
that they shouldn't feel empathize with the victims and want revenge/justice.
The benefit of not executing people (including not executing this guy) is that the innocent people on death row also don't die. Obviously in a world where the death penalty doesn't exist terrorists like this guy will stay alive, but I feel that keeping them separated from society in a maximum security prison accomplishes the same thing as killing them, either way they can no longer bring harm to their fellow citizens. But at this point I think we've both made our points clear and we'll just have to agree to disagree. I understand that most people would be fine with a guy like this being executed, and my opinion is the outlier.
I think that we can distinguish between cases where any sliver of reasonable doubt may exist from those where the facts are explicitly known and proven. The death penalty can be reserved for the latter.
If it were the case that a person could only be sentenced to death in a conviction where the facts are 100% cut and dry then I could see myself supporting the death penalty, but until the laws are actually written like that I'm going to have to remain against it in every case. I wonder if any countries have tried to pass legislation that does just that.
Last podcast on the left has a great series on this cult.
Oh yeah, they curse and all that and prolly nsfw without headphones.
https://soundcloud.com/lastpodcasto...-shinrikyo-death-cult-part-i-mountain-wizards
Oh yeah, they curse and all that and prolly nsfw without headphones.
https://soundcloud.com/lastpodcasto...-shinrikyo-death-cult-part-i-mountain-wizards
But most legal systems already operate on the principle that guilt must be established beyond reasonable doubt. It's easy to say that in theory the death penalty should be reserved for those who are undoubtedly guilty, but actually putting that into practice is another matter. One anti capital punishment argument is that implementing such a distinction on a systemic level would be practically impossible, due to the unavoidable existence of biases, human error/fallibility etc...
society is better if we don't let emotions get the better of us.
I read Underground last year and it was both extremely interesting and extremely haunting.
Whole thing happened a few days before I was born.
EDIT: I should say, even with what he did, that doesn't mean I'm fine with capital punishment here.
Whole thing happened a few days before I was born.
EDIT: I should say, even with what he did, that doesn't mean I'm fine with capital punishment here.
There's a lot of ugliness that Japan likes to hide behind their self-indulgence and nationalism.
The benefit is simply that without the death penalty, you remove the option the state has to kill people who could be innocent. That's really the core argument for or against the death penalty. It is a question of whether specifically killing the worst of us, is of enough value for the price paid of there being innocent people who could also be put to death because the system exits.
In this particular case, lets look at some of the facts. The attack took place in 1995. The trial lasted quite a while and he was finally sentenced in 2004. He was executed today in 2018. So he finally got killed 14 years after the sentence and 23 years after the crime took place. What's the point? What gratification can anyone get out of this? If the excuse for execution is closure, why does closure take 14 years? That's part of why the system feels flawed and broken. So you're okay with a guy who is 100% guilty and is considered scum of the Earth, to be found guilty and then sit in jail for over a decade, only to be executed at some point when they finally get to it, but you're not okay with life imprisonment? What difference would it make in the end? The reality is, not much. But the difference it makes to a person who is wrongly convicted is everything. Life or death. You can free someone who is still alive if it ever gets proven. You can't free someone who has been executed.
All trials against criminals from that cult did not end until like last year (there were many, very many cases and convicts). That is pretty much the only reason Asahara was not executed. After all trials are done government acted swiftly to spread them to jails across Japan, so they can be executed at the same day.
(After the long trial ended pretty much everyone expected the execution is imminent, especially the news about transferring them popped up).
Edit: Another reason is that couple of suspects kept freeing because of aids from the remaining cult, and trail against them started after they got caught.
(After the long trial ended pretty much everyone expected the execution is imminent, especially the news about transferring them popped up).
Edit: Another reason is that couple of suspects kept freeing because of aids from the remaining cult, and trail against them started after they got caught.
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