2003 JAPAN LAW: COERCED CONFESSIONS AND POLICE INVESTIGATIONS.
Keywords:  Criminal Law, Prison Law, Penal Code, Confessions, Warrants
Copyright 2004. All rights reserved Attorney Roderick H. Seeman
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There is increasing speculation in the Japanese press that the amazing 90%++ prosecution success rate in criminal cases depends too much on the judges’ deference to police investigations and confessions obtained on what sometimes appears to be near coercive conditions. Many experts also believe that acquitting suspects damages the career of the judges and thus judges tend to accept the closed door confessions. Taping of the closed door interrogations are not required. Apparently attorneys may not be present during such police interrogations. One of the key elements that the US military is now seeking from the Japanese government when it prosecutes US servicemen is that a representative of the US government be present during the interrogation. The Prison Law permits police interrogations in police cells. Police are permitted to interrogate suspects for up to 20 days without charge. The suspects are interrogated without outside contact, by professional interrogators for lengthy periods of time. If the suspect refuses to confess, the police investigators could extend it again be obtaining a fresh warrant. Thus many confess to end it all.

Increasingly however,  even judges in recent years are calling into question the accuracy of such confessions. In February 2003 the Kyoto District Court acquitted a defendant due to the coerced nature of his confession. In the same month, the Sapporo District Court acquitted two former presidents of the Hokkaido Takushoku Bank as their confessions had been guided by prosecutors. In September, 2003 the Tokyo High Court threw out the confession of a Filipina accused of killing her Japanese lover due to her being held without warrant, against her will, by the police at a hotel for ten days.  

In November, 2003 a man filed a case for 25 million yen against the state for being held for 455 days although he was innocent. He was accused of embezzling 600,000 yen by the manager of the restaurant where he worked.  He said the police simply accepted the allegations by the manager without further investigation and arrested him and held him for 455 days. The man also filed a criminal complaint alleging that it was in fact the manager who had carried out the embezzlement.

In another case, the police called one case a suicide even though the dead victim had been tied up. Relatives were angry because twenty years after the event a prison inmate confessed to the crime, after the statute of limitations had expired. If a proper investigation had been carried out, that may not have happened.

The UN Human Rights Commission in 1988 expressed grave concern over Japan’s handling of criminal cases, specifically the following:
---Suspects were interrogated without the presence of their attorneys
---Suspects were not able to seek release on bail and they could be held for up to 20 days before indictment
---Interrogations of suspects could be basically be held anywhere and for as long as the authorities wanted.