Two men arrested for murder of video arcade owner

Masahito Sakamoto - kidnap for ransom, murder - executed in April, 2008

Yoshimitsu Akiyama - robbery, murder - executed in December, 2006

Here are two, both men executed for one murder for financial gain. There are a lot more who have both been executed or are currently on death row for 1 murder for financial gain. Not going to waste my time posting something that you can easily find for yourself. In considering the death penalty judges first consider the degree of viciousness and then motive... the number of victims is the fourth consideration in sentencing...

Don't forget with the sword of omens I have sight beyond sight... lol... ;)

@thundercat

love the name but i gotta beg to differ with ya. can you cite any case within the past 10-20 years where a defendant was given the death penalty for killing one person for financial gain? i'll even throw in any type of homicide where there was only one person killed. i'll give you an eye of thundera of you can cite more than two.

@thundercat, not to 21 and 22 year old people it doesnt.

@Yubaru,

You are way off the mark. Murdering someone for financial gain very often results in a death sentence, even when there is only one person murdered. Quite a few recent cases of it as well.

I would get more satisfaction from knowing someone is doing hard labour and feeling pain and real misery every day of the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, prison can provide too many comforts. Prisoners may be deprived of their liberty but willing criminals soon feel at home mixing with the inside community of other low lifes.

I agree with both CrazyJoe and KevinLeeBrooke, some people, if we can even call them people, better say, horrible, horrible heartless, cold blooded murderers do not deserve to be FREE, to be walking around us waiting to kill more innocent people like this poor Video Arcade owner, so I just want to add may these 2 young punks HANG high and yes, BURN IN HELL for say all of Eternity! Amen?? And RIP old man who was killed

@Kevin Lee Brooke

You couldn't have said it better.

Premeditated murder, death as a result of sexual assault, and the murder of a child in ANY circumstance, should be an automatic "dead man walking". ESPECIALLY the third one.

The death penalty is not revenge. It is the act of giving equal (well, actually still LESS than equal, as it does not torture those who torture, nor does it sexually violate those who sexually violate - thought it should, in both counts) punishment for the crime. You steal, you pay for it with your time. You kill, you die.

Some of the sentences given in the States are absolutely ridiculous. "Two life sentences back to back", or " 150 years....". Who lives that long? It's a meaningless punishment. If they deserve two life sentences for their crime(s), they deserve to die; NOW.

In Japan, a life sentence usually means 20 years in prison, more or less, they are paroled after that. There is no "life sentence without parole" like they do in the United States.

A life sentence without parole and hard labour does sound the most appropriate solution Plenty of time to look at 4 concrete walls whilst they spend what remains of their lives contemplating the fact that they will never again attain the freedom of rejoining civilised soceity

its pathetic hard desperate people of today are for a bit of money.

i feel so bad for Akira ( I'm assuming this was his name) he probably didn't even see it coming.

i just hope he died painlessly

Well, it's good to know you're for the death penalty, 10 % of the time. What I wanted to state in my first post was these men deserved the harshest punishment possible under Japanese law. If a life term was the harshest punishment allowed, I would have said they deserve a life sentence. Thanks anyway.

How do you know they won't get the death penalty? Are you psychic? & And what deserves a death penalty?

Japanese courts rarely hand out the death penalty in cases where only 1 person is murdered. I'm not psychic just relating what I have seen through experience here. However if they get a "citizens" jury trial all bets are off.

Personally I am against the death penalty 90% of the time. I don't believe that it's right for governments nor society to seek revenge, and yeah that's how I see it, and murder someone for the crimes that they committed. There are other ways to incarcerate and punish people for their crimes.

To me people who deserve the death penalty are those that commit premeditated heinous crimes mostly against women and children and not limited to murder either. People like that to me anyway deserve no leniency and have no place in our society.

And what deserves a death penalty?

How do you know they won't get the death penalty? Are you psychic?

They won't get the death penalty and they do not deserve it either, a long sentence, at hard labor, in an environment where cockroaches wouldnt dare to live, would be a better punishment in my opinion.

these punks killed someone for a measly 100,000 yen? what the?!?!

A robbery murder deserves the death penalty. One of the guys even knew the victim.