SUB-HEADING: "A long way to change."
GIST: "In 2020 the president of a small machinery-making firm in Yokohama, near Tokyo, was arrested along with two of its executives.
The charge?
That the company was sending equipment to be turned into biological weapons in China.
The three were detained for 11 months.
Their application for bail was rejected by judges five times.
The investigators implied they would be freed if they admitted the crime, but they refused.
By the time they were released on bail one of them had died from stomach cancer without access to treatment.
They were all eventually found to be innocent.
The incident illustrates a wider problem.
Japan’s criminal-justice system includes long-term detention of suspects and overreliance on confessions.
This “hostage justice system” has recently been the focus of growing criticism.
After the prosecutors dropped charges against Ohkawara Kakohki, one of the officials admitted publicly that the investigators had “fabricated” the case as a result of “personal greed” to advance their careers by securing convictions.
Such an admission is “unheard of”, says Takada Tsuyoshi, the lawyer in charge of the case.
In June Kadokawa Tsuguhiko, a former chairman of a publishing giant who was arrested and detained for 226 days on bribery charges, filed a lawsuit accusing the justice system of being “unconstitutional”, the first such trial in Japan.
(In a recent memoir, Mr Kadokawa wrote that a doctor at the detention centre told him that he would not “leave here alive”.)
And in September Hakamada Iwao, who spent 46 years on death row for murder, was exonerated.
The judge said the evidence used to arrest him might have been faked. Such cases raise questions about the country’s very high conviction rate, which is 99.8% for cases that go to trial.
In some respects, Japan is a lenient place.
It has a low crime rate and locks up far fewer citizens than other rich countries: 33 people out of 100,000, compared with 541 in America and 140 in Britain.
Minor offenders who admit guilt and apologise are often freed with a stern warning.
But when prosecutors decide to go after someone, they have extraordinary powers.
Unlike in other rich countries, they rely heavily on confessions, rather than physical evidence: nine out of ten cases in Japan still hinge on the suspect’s admission of guilt.
Before any indictment, prosecutors can detain suspects for up to 23 days.
That is already much longer than in other democratic countries. And suspects are often re-arrested on separate charges as soon as the 23 days are up.
In 2022 nearly 90,000 people (or fully 96% of suspects) were detained.
Conditions are harsh.
Cells are clean but tiny: usually around five square metres and sunless.
Detainees are called by numbers, are only allowed to exercise for about 30 minutes a week and are constantly watched by guards.
“They hadn’t even proven that I’m guilty,” says Shimada Junji, one of the arrested employees of Ohkawara Kakohki. “So why was I treated like a criminal?”
Detainees are subject to lengthy interrogations.
Suspects are questioned for an average of 22 hours in total in Japan, compared with an average of two hours in America and 30 minutes in Britain.
Unlike in most other countries, lawyers are not allowed to attend these sessions, and the constitutional right to remain silent is often violated.
When Eguchi Yamato, a lawyer, was interrogated following his arrest in 2018, he exercised his right to remain silent.
But the interrogation continued for 56 hours over 21 days. Investigators called him a “child”.
All this amounts to pressure to make a confession, even a fake one, just to be freed.
In 2020 bail rates before an initial trial were 26% for those who confessed, compared with 12% for those who continued to protest their innocence.
Earlier this year, a cabinet member who was asked about the Ohkawara Kakohki case responded that prosecutors handle detention of suspects in a way that “sufficiently takes human rights into consideration”.
That didn’t give much hope to reformers that the system would be changed.
Yet some improvements have been made.
Since the mid-2010s some investigations have been recorded.
Earlier this year hundreds of parliamentarians formed a group to revise rules pertaining to retrials.
Under the current law prosecutors can easily block retrials for those who claim to be wrongfully convicted. T
That was why it took Mr Hakamada so long to be freed from death row.
The recent scandals are also prompting many to rethink how criminal cases are dealt with in the country. “My hope is that things will inch forward towards progress,” says Mr Shimada."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/11/07/why-suspects-in-japan-are-almost-never-acquitted
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
- SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
