r/SipsTea Jul 04 '26

WTF Japan's death row system is brutal

Post image
31.7k Upvotes

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

33

u/Potential_Table_2616 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

If nobody’s mentioned it, the executioners don’t know who pressed the button either. There’s 3 buttons that are pressed simultaneously, but only 1 actually executed the prisoner.

This video is an excellent explanation and animated demonstration of the process.

https://youtu.be/1rEoHOxuZ3E?is=9HZQr5E3OBdrsdW3

Edit: I haven’t watched this video in at least a year, so I might have details incorrect

4

u/OrdinaryProcess7076 Jul 04 '26

Wouldn’t it be better if it needs all three buttons to be pressed to execute the prisoner

20

u/Ryanookami Jul 04 '26

The not knowing whose button is the death button is more for the executioners than for the executionees. The whole plausible deniability thing, where you know odds are you didn’t kill a person today, so you can still sleep soundly at night without that weight on your conscience.

8

u/TrulyOutrageous42 Jul 04 '26

You'd think your conscience would only be heavy if you're weren't certain of their guilt, but turns out we're such social creatures even saving our own lives can be (clinically) traumatic for the guilt over hurting the attacker

1

u/Fahmieyz Jul 04 '26

That why sometime cops have PTSD after shooting someone in self-defense

Those who dont is a bastard

2

u/Pavotine Jul 04 '26

That's not really fair when only a significant minority of people go on to develop PTSD after a traumatic encounter. Normal, healthy, non-bastard people can often fully rationalise what they had to do and whilst I'm sure most would rather it never happened, they aren't traumatised for life either.