J’accuse!
A man who was wrongly accused of groping a schoolgirl on a Tokyo train in October 2003 finally has been declared innocent by the Tokyo High Court.
The 16-year-old girl grabbed the man and accused him of groping her as they got off of the train more than two years ago. He denied the accusation and even agreed to go to the stationmaster’s office to clear up the incident. Police took him into custody, however, and held him for 105 days as they tried to force him to admit his guilt. The man was adamant, however, that it was a man on the other side of the girl who groped her. Though the girl claimed that the man inserted his hand into her underwear, the police did not bother to collect any forensic evidence.
“If police had properly investigated, things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did,” the man said. “Police could have tested whether there was evidence on my hand. But I was made a criminal without doing the test.”
A police officer even testified that such tests are usually done on suspected gropers to collect evidence, but the test was not conducted in the man’s case.
The prosecution’s case was based largely on police arguments that the other man on the train could not have reached the victim.
The man was found guilty by the Tokyo District Court and he was branded a groper.
From that point the man embarked on his journey to clear his name, depleting his savings to mount his appeal. Now, more than two years after the initial incident the man has been declared innocent by the Tokyo High Court, which declared that the police were negligent in their investigation.
“There is no doubt the student was the victim of a groper, but her testimony is not sufficient to convict the defendant,” Presiding Judge Kunio Harada said in his ruling.
Harada also cited sloppiness in the work of the investigators, and said they might have even misled the victim into believing the man was the culprit.
“This is a case that would not have ordinarily led to an indictment,” the judge said.
The man wiped away the stream of tears that flowed upon hearing the not-guilty ruling.
He had been waiting for so long to hear those words.
Here’s hoping that the man can now get his life back together.
Poor Mari….she’s my favorite. If I ever become a j-pop singer and part of the...
Shes definitely at the top of my hot list.
perfeckt 10:10
I’m not for groping little girls on trains, but this case seems to smack of poor police work and a crappy judicial system. How they could even hold him that long in jail on such a charge.
March 11th, 2006 at 1:27 amI read from debito that the Japanese has like ~99% conviction rate; so beware if you’re arrested. It’s the whole “guilty until proven innocent” thing.
March 11th, 2006 at 3:44 amThe thing is, they can hold you for virtually as long as they want in isolation without you getting to speak to a lawyer. You don’t get the lawyer until after you confess. That’s the reason for the 99% confession rate, people just break down after a few days of any-time-during-day-or-night interrogations and confess. This makes defence lawyer’s job a joke, they don’t try to prove their client innocent because his confession is already there. All they do is to try to get their client as mild a sentence as possible. Couple that with extremely long breaks between hearing (often a month or more) and that rarely does the same judge hear the case all the way through.
Correct me if I’m wrong but this is the way the system was at least 3 years ago.
March 11th, 2006 at 5:00 amIt could have been a case of mistaken identity, true. On the other hand, it could also be a he said she said case, and who knows who is telling the truth. Those trains ARE crowded.
If he is really innocent, yes, let him get on with his life. And if he was lying, let him rot in purgatory until his right limbo falls off!
These kinds of cases are hard to solve. Still, the police work does seem shoddy.
It’s another one of those Rashomon cases. He said, she said.
I hope he gets on with his life. I hope the young woman, maybe 19 now, has gotten on with her life, too.
March 11th, 2006 at 12:51 pmYou can be held in police custody and interrogated (ostensibly to “investigate” but the police almost always end up with a confession) for up to 23 days. See http://www.debito.org/arrestperiods.html#japanese
In Japan the police use the confession from the arrested party as their primary evidence against him/her, and the courts use the defendant’s expressions of “remorse” for what he/she did as the primary basis for sentencing. As in many countries, Japanese judges have a range of punishments available to them, such as 5-10 years in prison, or fine of no more than 50,000 yen, etc. You get the book thrown at you if you insist you didn’t do it (“I wuz framed!”), but judges often show relative leniency to defendants who show the required “remorse” even if what they did was clearly heinous.
March 13th, 2006 at 9:53 amThe more I read about Japan, the more f***ed up it seems.
March 13th, 2006 at 9:07 pmYea, if all I read were the bad things and didn’t have an open mind, then I too would think a nation is screwed up:mrgreen:
March 13th, 2006 at 11:32 pmJapan’s criminal investigation system is certainly antiquated. The law establishing the methods of interrogation were passed in 1908. But this might change. See http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20060313TDY03006.htm
Japan isn’t quite the lost-cause it may seem to be at first glance. The bureaucracy just moves REALLY slowly.:sad:
March 14th, 2006 at 9:51 am