JAPAN INFLICTS SEVERE MENTAL ANGUISH ON PEOPLE CONDEMNED TO HANGING

The BBC today reports on Amnesty International's criticism of Japanese procedures for executing convicts. Amnesty specifically calls the death penalty in Japan "shameful" for the several reasons.

The condemned person is put in solitary confinement without the ability to talk to or interface with anyone else. Exercise is short and limited, and the prisoner must at all other times be seated.

No date is given the condemned for execution. That means that a condemned person spends every night thinking that it could be his/her last.

Japan seems intent on inflicting the severest and cruelest punishment it can on the condemned. Amnesty reports a large number of psychoses appearing in persons who have received the death sentence. Amnesty calls for an immediate halt in Japan's system of executions. I fully agree.

END DEATH PENALTY NOW

Maureen Fan writes today on the web site of The Washington Post that a court in China has sentenced an Olympic official to death for taking millions in bribes. The court then gave a reprieve from the death sentence.

Reports Fan:

"Liu Zhihua, 59, oversaw construction, real estate, sports and traffic projects for the Beijing Olympic Games until he was fired in June 2006 over charges of corruption and bad morals. His high-profile antics and "decadent lifestyle" attracted the shocked attention of the country's top leaders, according to Chinese media reports."

The official is lucky in receiving a reprieve. How many others in China are sentenced to death, and then suffer the execution of the sentence?

When will "civilized" countries do away with the death sentence? I mean not only China but the United States, Iraq and Iran?

Proponents claim the death penalty prevents and deters other criminals from committing serious crimes. But there is no credible evidence that this is true. Other proponents say that the death penalty is a just penalty, in other words, proportional retribution for crimes that offend society. But why should the state take a person's life, no matter how serious a crime was committed? Saddam Hussein should not have been hanged; that was cruel and violent and unworthy of the state of Iraq. And certainly no one can argue that the death penalty "rehabilitates" because the condemned loses his life and his chance to reform.

The death penalty is cruel and unusual and inflicts horrible physical and emotional punishment on the condemned. A state, given all its power, overreaches its powers when it condemns and then executes the person convicted. And there is no evidence whatsoever that the death penalty deters others.

The United States is just as guilty of inflicting cruel and unusual punishment via the death penalty as the rest of the unenlightened countries that put their citizens to death.

IRAN HANGS 29 CRIMINALS IN CRUEL IMPOSITION OF DEATH PENALTY

As my readers know, I am adamantly opposed to military action by the U.S. or Israel against Iran on account of its nuclear power development. However, from time to time, I think actions of the Iranian government are reprehensible and cruel. Consider for example the news reports today that Iranian authorities executed 29 criminals this morning by hanging.

The BBC reports:

"The latest hangings were carried out after the death sentences were approved by the country's Supreme Court, IRIB reported. "Twenty-nine drug smugglers and well-known bandits were hanged in Evin prison on Sunday at dawn," the statement said. "These criminals had smuggled thousands of kilos of narcotics in the country and outside the country." "

The only countries to rival Iran as the leading executioners are the United States and China. You might think that more civilized a country is, the less it would utilize the death penalty. But that apparently is not so.

For a state to impose and carry out taking a person's life is barbaric, cruel and without societal benefit. Some argue that the death penalty is a deterrent. If so, why does the world still have people who commit crimes punishable by death?

When the state takes a life, it is just as inhumane and barbaric as any murderer. Every imposition of the death penalty must be condemned whether done by China, the U.S. or Iran.

JUDGE MUKASEY - UNDERGO WATER-BOARDING TO SEE IF IT IS TORTURE

Marty Lederman has a post at Balkinization in which he marvels that a jurist of Judge Mukasey's stature cannot say for sure whether he thinks "water-boarding" is a form of torture and therefore unconstitutional. Mukasey has been an appellate judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. So this is someone who has had lifetime tenure as a federal judge under Article III of the Constitution. Yet he is not prepared to say that water-boarding is cruel and unusual and therefore illegal.

I have a suggestion for Judge Mukasey. Try it out on yourself. Ask some CIA agents to come over to your office and perform it on you. Let them tie you to a board, put a cloth over your head and face, and then pour water on it and you. Then you will be better prepared to say whether it is torture.