{"id":7693,"date":"2010-10-29T08:33:33","date_gmt":"2010-10-28T23:33:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=7693"},"modified":"2010-10-29T08:33:33","modified_gmt":"2010-10-28T23:33:33","slug":"economist-london-on-corrupt-public-prosecutors-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=7693","title":{"rendered":"Economist London on corrupt public prosecutors in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Handbook<\/a>\"\\\"<\/a>\"Foreign<\/a>\"\\\"<\/a>\"\u300c\u30b8\u30e3\u30d1\u30cb\u30fc\u30ba\u30fb\u30aa\u30f3\u30ea\u30fc\u3000\u5c0f\u6a3d\u5165\u6d74\u62d2\u5426\u554f\u984c\u3068\u4eba\u7a2e\u5dee\u5225\u300d\uff08\u660e\u77f3\u66f8\u5e97\uff09\"<\/a>\"JAPANESE<\/a>\"sourstrawberriesavatar\"<\/a>\"debitopodcastthumb\"<\/a>
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Hi Blog. Here’s an article I spotted last week in my issue of The Economist. Not sure I’ve ever heard of \u5b98\u5c0a\u6c11\u5351 referred to below, but I certainly have heard of how skewed towards the prosecution Japan’s criminal justice system is.<\/a> Here’s one symptom of the problem — falsification of evidence by prosecutors — which came to light only because the judge did the unusual step of bucking the system. Arudou Debito<\/p>\n

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Japan’s judiciary on trial
\nProsecutors or persecutors?
\nA legal scandal may spark reform of the Japanese judicial system
\nThe Economist London, Oct 14th 2010 | TOKYO<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/www.economist.com\/node\/17259159<\/a><\/p>\n

AMONG the four-character idioms that all Japanese schoolchildren must learn is kan son min pi (\u201crespect officials, despise the people\u201d). It defines the traditional relationship of individuals as subservient to the state\u2014among whose representatives none is accorded more authority than the public prosecutor. The great privilege this confers on the role, however, can lead to its abuse.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A run of recent legal scandals, including wrongful convictions and brutal incarcerations, has tested respect for Japan\u2019s criminal-justice system. The latest example, alleged evidence-tampering by a high-flying prosecutor and a cover-up by his bosses, has rallied many who want to see more regard for individual rights and greater checks on state power. The prosecutor in question, Tsunehiko Maeda, allegedly changed the date of a file on a computer disk that was being used as evidence against a woman accused of involvement in a massive benefit fraud. When Mr Maeda admitted this to his superiors, they are said to have ordered him to produce a report explaining how it happened \u201cunintentionally\u201d. On October 11th the Supreme Public Prosecutors\u2019 Office dismissed Mr Maeda, the chief prosecutor in Osaka\u2019s special investigative unit, and pressed charges against him.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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The scandal has hit a nerve. Japan takes pride in one of the world\u2019s lowest crime rates. But it also has a fishily high conviction rate, at 99.9%. That matches China\u2019s and is far above rates in the West (see chart). In their defence, Japanese lawyers say that the country\u2019s under-resourced state prosecution service is only able to bring the strongest cases to trial. Fear of failure, with which all Japan\u2019s bureaucrats are imbued, reinforces a reticence to test weaker cases in court. According to a former Tokyo district court judge, a single courtroom loss can badly damage a prosecutor\u2019s career. A second can end it.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet the recent scandals suggest that miscarriages of justice are all too common. So do several quirks of the justice system, which weigh the scales against the accused. Suspects can be held for up to 23 days without charge, for example. They often have little access to a lawyer and none during questioning. Police interrogations commonly last up to ten hours and are rife with mental and verbal abuse. On October 7th a businessman in Osaka produced a surreptitious recording of his seven-hour \u201cvoluntary\u201d questioning, in which the police threaten to hit him and destroy his life.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Part of the problem is that Japan has too few lawyers; one tenth the number per head of Britain (see chart, again). That is largely because the government makes it remarkably difficult to become one. For years it set the bar exam pass-rate at around 3%, though it has recently increased it to 25%. This reflects a fear, in a conflict-shy country, that more lawyers will make society more litigious, not more just.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Recent reforms have improved matters a little. A sort-of jury system, introduced last year, has a panel of six citizens review cases alongside judges, who ultimately pronounce on them. This system produced its first acquittal in June. A more important change, says Kazuko Ito, a lawyer specialising in wrongful-conviction cases, would oblige prosecutors to disclose any mitigating evidence. Former prosecutors also urge judges to be more skeptical about the word of prosecutors and the police.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In Mr Maeda\u2019s shabby case, the court threw out much of the evidence and acquitted the accused. Mr Maeda\u2019s supervisors have also been arrested. Now a titillated Japanese public looks forward to prosecuting the prosecutors.<\/em><\/strong>
\nENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Economist: A run of recent legal scandals, including wrongful convictions and brutal incarcerations, has tested respect for Japan\u2019s criminal-justice system. The latest example, alleged evidence-tampering by a high-flying prosecutor and a cover-up by his bosses, has rallied many who want to see more regard for individual rights and greater checks on state power. The prosecutor in question, Tsunehiko Maeda, allegedly changed the date of a file on a computer disk that was being used as evidence against a woman accused of involvement in a massive benefit fraud. When Mr Maeda admitted this to his superiors, they are said to have ordered him to produce a report explaining how it happened \u201cunintentionally\u201d. On October 11th the Supreme Public Prosecutors\u2019 Office dismissed Mr Maeda, the chief prosecutor in Osaka\u2019s special investigative unit, and pressed charges against him…<\/p>\n

The scandal has hit a nerve. Japan takes pride in one of the world\u2019s lowest crime rates. But it also has a fishily high conviction rate, at 99.9%. That matches China\u2019s and is far above rates in the West (see chart). In their defence, Japanese lawyers say that the country\u2019s under-resourced state prosecution service is only able to bring the strongest cases to trial. Fear of failure, with which all Japan\u2019s bureaucrats are imbued, reinforces a reticence to test weaker cases in court. According to a former Tokyo district court judge, a single courtroom loss can badly damage a prosecutor\u2019s career. A second can end it.<\/p>\n

Yet the recent scandals suggest that miscarriages of justice are all too common. So do several quirks of the justice system, which weigh the scales against the accused. Suspects can be held for up to 23 days without charge, for example. They often have little access to a lawyer and none during questioning. Police interrogations commonly last up to ten hours and are rife with mental and verbal abuse. On October 7th a businessman in Osaka produced a surreptitious recording of his seven-hour \u201cvoluntary\u201d questioning, in which the police threaten to hit him and destroy his life…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-injustice","category-japanese-policeforeign-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}