Presumed Guilty
Japan’s criminal justice system is in the international spotlight this week with the release of a film produced by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA) entitled ‘Presumed Guilty - Creating False Confessions‘ in which “former defendants talk about how they were forced to confess by investigators during interrogations.”
Tokyo lawyer Shinichiro Koike said “I hope many people [...] will watch this film and realize that confessions are ‘created.’ And I expect it to contribute to improving Japan’s judicial system.”
Koike, the lawyer, who has been working to improve the criminal judicial system for the past 30 years, said, ‘‘I have come to a new realization our system is in a terrible state than I thought through producing the film.’’
Even if a person is summoned by police on a voluntary basis, he or she is sometimes questioned for 14 hours a day without a break, and is scrutinized even when going to the bathroom, according to Koike.
‘‘Under these circumstances, anybody, even me, a lawyer, would be exhorted to make confessions,’’ he said.
More details available at Japan Times, which has the same article.
In a weird way, it’s good to read another story describing abuses of power by the Japanese police and justice system. Good, because it also proves there’s steady pressure within Japan to push for judicial reform. The shame is that progress is so glacially slow.
Movies like this documentary and last year’s I Just Didn’t Do it, as well as events like next year’s introduction of a partial jury system, can only keep drawing attention to the issue in the public’s mind.
The problem is well-documented, at least abroad. Just one example: about a year ago, the New York Times had a main section front-page story about a very similar incident in Saga prefecture: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/world/asia/11japan.html (Apologies if this was already covered here - I couldn’t find any references in the archive.)
It seems to me that in today’s world, stories like these should be incredibly embarrassing to any advanced nation. So I wonder how much the average Japanese-in-the-street is even aware of these kinds of abuses. What do people here think?
May 22nd, 2008 at 2:45 amIt may be a good sign that the Japanese Supreme Court is also looking for advice and background information from outside sources (http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1209546328855).
OK. Going to sound weird but, well, do any of those irksome ‘CSI’ franchise shows get on the air in Japan? I would have thought their popularity may make some average Japanese viewers wonder why there isn’t more reliance on physical proof at a crime scene. (Caveat: I’ve only ever seen one episode but the shows sure seem popular on this side of the pond).
Apparently, there’s also a deep reliance on confessions in the Chinese judiciary, too. Now. Come on. Does Japan want to be associated with *that*?
I’m waiting for them to go through their death row inmate files to weed out cases where there was nothing *but* a confession. I don’t even want to think about how many innocent people were executed based on coerced confessions and nothing more… .
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:36 amI know this is opening up a can of worms that may already be covered elsewhere in Japundit, but I can’t help thinking things are even worse for foreign prisoners.
Nick Baker, a British chef who was visiting to watch the World Cup years ago, was found to be carrying drugs that he swore up and down were planted on him by a travelling companion who disappeared (and who subsequently committed suicide). His story sounds very believable, but he wound up signing a confession he couldn’t read, is still banged up, and will be for many years to come: http://www.justicefornickbaker.org/
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:36 pmNick Baker has been transferred to serve the rest of his 11 year sentence, he’s done 6 years, to a UK prison, I think Wandsworth in London. I think his mother does not think he was innocent. Two young female foreigners who were found to be importing drugs in a similar way claimed by Nick Baker were released by the judge who decided that they weren’t guilty.
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:12 amYou’re right, thank you. It just happened last week, I hadn’t seen that. Here’s a piece from yesterday’s Japan Times: http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/nick-baker-sent-back-to-britain-to-finish-jail-sentence
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:27 amBetty, CSI is being shown in Japan. I don’t recall if it’s on broadcast tv or satellite.
While I don’t doubt the problems with the Japanese justice system and its reliance on coerced confessions, I think I recall reading that Baker’s story of innocence during a once in a lifetime trip to Japan for the World Cup doesn’t check out. Something about debts, an earlier trip to Japan, etc. He might have suffered in the prison and been coerced into making a confession he didn’t understand, but that doesn’t make him innocent.
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:48 pm