Liberal Japan

Another false confession …

2007/06/21 Retrial opens to clear man wrongfully convicted of rape, The Yomiuri Shimbun; “The retrial to prove the innocence of a 40-year-old man who was imprisoned after being wrongfully found guilty of rape and attempted rape, opened Wednesday at the Toyama District Court Takaoka branch. … The defense counsel also made a statement and severely criticized the faulty investigation, saying: ‘By prejudging the defendant as the assailant, [the police] arrested and detained him and, after a long, coercive interrogation, forced the man to make a fictitious confession and falsely charged him as a criminal.’”

Nothing new here …

According to Alec Dubro and David E. Kaplan seminal study Yakuza: Japan’s Criminal Underworld:

Central to Japan’s success is the remarkable fact that most suspects brought to court sign confessions during interrogations by police and prosecutors. Indeed, confession rates have run as high as 89 percent.

Although confessing one’s errors occupies an important place in Japanese culture, some observers believe officials have gone much too far in trying to obtain confessions. Since at least the early 1980s, reports by human rights groups, legal associations, and others have branded Japan’s justice system among the most backward in the modern world. A 1984 report by a group of Tokyo lawyers is typical of the charges made: marathon interrogation sessions lasting fourteen hours or more occur in many cases; suspects placed in tiny, brightly lit cells known as “birdcages” and forced to sit crosslegged on the floor, forbidden to lean against the wall; defense attorneys not allowed in interrogation rooms. Police, furthermore, can routinely detain suspects for twenty-three days without charging them, and sometimes re-arrest them on a series of separate charges, thus extending detention time as needed. (Some European countries, it should be noted, allow detention for as long as six months for crimes deemed serious enough.) Some Japanese judges even refuse to grant bail until a suspect confesses.
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So great is the pressure to gain a confession, say critics, that police routinely use physical abuse against suspects during interrogations. Japan’s immigration police are particularly notorious for their violent disdain toward illegal aliens. In some cases, police stand accused of forcing detainees to sign blank confessions. Authorities deny these charges and have claimed that such criticisms are motivated by “leftist ideology. ” But the confessionbased system has led to numerous incidents of false imprisonment, including a string of widely publicized cases that resulted in overturned verdicts after years of imprisonment. [see pages 173 to 174]

Previous News:

• 2007/05/30 Japan: “Thought Check” Screening for Citizen Judges, Global Voices; Excellent article. Does not deal directly with forced confessions, but well worth checking out in relation to this topic.
• 2007/05/29 FT: UN Committee against Torture castigates Japan’s judicial system, Debito.org; This blog entry includes entire Financial Times article plus relevant UN documents and more.
• 2007/05/12 Japan urged to come clean on confessions, Los Angeles Times via Debito.org; Good all around article on this topic.
• 2007/05/11 Pressed by Police, Even Innocent Confess in Japan, The New York Times via debito.org; “In all, 13 men and women, ranging in age from their early 50s to mid-70s, were arrested and indicted. Six buckled and confessed to an elaborate scheme of buying votes with liquor, cash and catered parties. One man died during the trial — from the stress, the others said — and another tried to kill himself. But all were acquitted this year in a local district court, which found that their confessions had been entirely fabricated.”
• 2007/03/11 Forced Confessions and the Japanese Justice System, Trans-Pacific Radio; Must read article for this topic.
• 2007/02/02 ‘I Just Didn’t Do It’ questions court system, The Japan Times; “…the story of a young man arrested for groping a schoolgirl on a crowded commuter train. Though he protests his innocence, the authorities try to force him to sign a confession that would ensure his release once he pays compensation to the victim.”
• 2005/10/13 Justice system flawed by presumed guilt The Japan Times; “Japan’s criminal justice system lacks a fundamental notion that is manifest in other parts of the democratized world: the presumption of innocence, according to human rights advocates. Suspects are still forced to make false confessions during interrogations in which legal representation is banned, and custody can last up to 23 days before charges are filed, lawyers and people who claim to have or were determined to have been falsely accused told a recent public meeting in Tokyo held by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations.”
• 2003/03/05 Recruit exec gets suspended term in bribes scandal dating from ’80s, The Japan Times; “During the trial, Ezoe had also insisted that he had been forced to confess during interrogation by prosecutors, who he said used tactics bordering on torture. He argued, for example, that he was told he ‘would not be released on bail unless he confessed.’ However, the court ruled that the credibility and voluntary nature of his confession to prosecutors were not in doubt.”
• 2002/12/18 ON POLICE ARREST AND INTERROGATION PROCEDURES IN JAPAN: A FEW CASE STUDIEs, Debito.org; Very useful case studies.