Efforts continue to achieve hanged killer's final wish

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.

I don't get it, why would a law association of all things use such a blatant logical fallacy (argumentum ad populum)? If two-thirds of the world's nations still had the death penalty would that then become an argument in favor of restating it in a country without it?

Japan should take a close look at its fellow members of the one-third of nations that still have the death penalty. That will help to explain whether the one-third are in the right or the wrong. It's not simply a matter of numbers.

The argumentum ad populum argument is only valid when there is insufficient reason for an argument. For example, most of the world wears clothes, therefore those societies that traditionally do not wear clothes must be forced to wear clothes. The argument fails because it does give any sufficient reasons why those societies that have no problems not wearing clothes should wear clothes. In the case above, you have a short journalistic paraphrase of one aspect of the JFBA's opposition to capital punishment, not a direct statement by the JFBA. You can be sure that JFBA's case against capital punishment is not based on only argumentum ad populum but on facts and sound arguments. I need not go over them here. Pointing out more than two thirds of all nations have abolished capital punishment is valid when used to show (1) these nations benefit and suffer no ill effects from the abolition of capital punishment (2) and that these nations show that capital punishment is barbaric and fickle.

Using other countries as examples is perfectly valid when those examples reenforce the validity of a reasonable argument.

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.

Oh, my dog! What an awkward paragraph! How much information can you try to squeeze into one sentence? I had to read it three times before I understood it! 4 commas and an abbreviation? A perfect example of Japanese high school Janglish. It's a shame it's not really English though.

I'm all for capital punishment.

once you have chosen to take someone's life or lives..

no matter how bleak or desperate your own situation is.

you the killer should face his or her own consequences.

if not, who should pay for the lives of those innocent victims who were killed nonsensically just because your own situation is TOO bleak and pathetic.

I'm all for capital punishment.

Even if the state arrests you for something you didn't do and murders you?

Even if the state decides you are a nuisance, fits you up, and murders you?

The state should never have the power to murder people as it will be abused.