> Finally, there is the prevalence of confessions. Ever notice how so many of Nick's clients have already confessed to crimes by the time he takes on their case? Known as "the king of evidence" by the Japanese system, confessions obtained in custody by prosecutors and police are the basis of the majority of convictions. Few rules govern what goes on in a Japanese interrogation room. Suspects are held for long periods before being charged or brought to trial, and the law offers them little protection. Critics argue that the system is open to abuse, and that false confessions are often extracted through coercion.
> Take the case of Toshikazu Sugaya. He matched the profile and blood type of a child murderer, but the police lacked any evidence. "They barged in and told me to sit down," recalls Sugaya. "Then they kept saying, 'You killed that kid, didn't you?' I said 'No, no,' but they didn't believe me." After a 13 hour interrogation without food, water, or a lawyer, Sugaya confessed. Armed with this confession, the prosecution successfully convicted him and he was sentenced to life in prison. It would be nearly 18 years before modern DNA evidence would completely exonerate him.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/is...
That's right, Phoenix Wright is probably a form of social criticism disguised as a game.
1. People don't get murdered, instead they die of "heart attacks," or they "accidentally fell down a stairwell" and the perp goes free.
2. They can keep you detained without representation for quite some time, in the meantime you are worn down physically and psychologically till you just want to make it "go away" so you sign a "confession" letter.
Interestingly enough (having now done some minimal research), for terrorism cases, you can be detained up to 28 (!) days without a charge in the UK. https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/sites/default/files/...
> adding a second charge
Okay.
True, there's a lot of discretion in the Japanese prosecutorial system. Ditto USA. A big difference is that in Japan this discretion is mostly wielded judiciously.
Crime rate is also extremely low in Japan. I don't have evidence that the legal system is the reason, but I believe it's a significant contributing factor.
So where are all these righteously aggrieved innocents you worry about? They don't seem to show up in the stats.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... tldr: {jp:47, uk:163, us:693}
"Only 6.3% of the unnatural deaths in Aichi [prefecture] are investigated by a medical examiner, a minuscule rate even by nationwide standards in Japan, where an autopsy is performed in 11.2% of cases."
There are numerous cases of false allegations, and recently one guy who was being chased by the police despite claiming his innocence (and all his close friend and co-workers said that was not the kind of guy to do this) just fell to his death while trying to escape this situation.
My money is on the high degree of integration of the Japanese society. They are homogenous and everyone is well kept in place by their social network. That's why they don't become criminals as much, compared to US where crime correlates with disenfranchisement. The more a population feels the game is stacked against it, the more it will do crime, but an integrated society feels much more fair.
So, did you really interpret me as saying Japan didn't have a problem? Is there somewhere where I could clarify my stance (a bit too late to edit the post now, but for future reference)?
[1]http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/10/japan-forc...
[2]https://gaijinass.com/2011/01/02/7-brutal-realities-regardin...
Wikipedia in Japanese - Criminal Trial Judgements (判決確定数 - number of judicial decisions, 有罪 - guilty, 無罪 - not guilty)
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AE%E5...
At the bottom of the table it links all the data to
Looks pretty unofficial but that is Japan Ministry of Justice website and is linked by the more official looking one
http://www.moj.go.jp/housouken/houso_hakusho2.html
Ministry of Justice White Papers in English
http://hakusyo1.moj.go.jp/en/nendo_nfm.html
Judgement rates 2005-2014 in English
However, as you're insisting that Japanese-only sources are necessary to consider the claim to be reliable, perhaps you can provide the necessary Japanese sources which contradict it?
This isn't a court of law, and you're not the defendant. There is no "burden of proof."
>I'm only asking for a single credible source from inside Japan, and in Japanese.
Sources from inside Japan and in Japanese have already been posted here. If you find those inadequate, what Japanese language news sources would you recommend? Perhaps you could search those and tell us what they have to report, if anything, on the matter.
>. What if the Japanese criminal justice system is just really well run? That is an equally credible conclusion until proven wrong.
In any other context, with any other country, the police being able to detain and interrogate suspects for weeks and a judicial system with a 99% conviction rate would be assumed to be evidence of unchecked state power. And, of course, "well run" and "systemically corrupt" are not diametrically opposed.
I understand from past comments that you're passionate about fighting against what you perceive as false cultural stereotypes about Japan, which is fine, but in this particular case the assumption being made is that Japan is no different than any other state in the ways that power and opportunity can breed corruption. It can't be "equally credible" to assume that Japan is somehow an exception to human nature.
Did you really just sneak back into this thread after a week just to drop a snarky one-liner?
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2012/11/japan-end-abu...
That's what this thread is about, isn't it?
So Japan's acquittal rate is only 15 times lower than one of the most prison-happy countries in the world.
> Secondly, Japanese suspects confess. The theory is that they're coerced, but that requires one to accept a lot of speculation about the psychological impact of prolonged interrogations.
...Which speculation is that, exactly? Are you saying you don't believe that people will do almost anything to escape after being tormented for days or weeks? Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, please.
> you need to be suspicious to even be on their radar.
"The innocent have nothing to hide." Uh huh.
A hypothetical system that is in theory wide open to abuse, but where, in practice abuse rarely happens, should be compared favourably with another which has strong theoretic abuse controls, yet in practice is abused systematically. At least until such time as systematic violation is common in the former and the latter lives up to its ideals.
If you assume for a moment that the allegations are true, that powerlessness is exemplified in this thread–you have someone from Japan basically saying that if you're even under suspicion you probably did something to deserve it. Coming from somewhere like the US that scares me more even if that fear is irrational in a practical sense.
I've spent time living both in the US and outside of it. Yes, the US has unique problems it's dealing with, but jeeze so does every other country. I'm always shocked when people paint the US as some sort of hellhole. I just assume these are people without first hand experience.
>> I've spent time living both in the US and outside of it
Me too. I invite you to spend one day reading and watching global stories and deliberately replacing the words "USA" (implicit or explicit) with "Australia" or any other country of your choice. You'll come to realise the extent of USA's cultural importance when you are reading so much about "Australia". You'll begin to wonder why we seem to care so much. Love or loathe USA, we are fixated on this one country. I believe this is all to the advantage of most Americans now, but that advantage is declining.
If a country sets itself up as a bastion of freedom they're going to be scrutinised when they fail to meet the standards they set for themselves.
But indeed, if you look at the data for cases that go to court, the conviction rate is high. http://hakusyo1.moj.go.jp/en/64/nfm/n_64_2_2_3_1_0.html
But that was my point in GP.
With apologies to Terry Pratchett: Japan's philosophy is that if you're going to have crime, at least it should be organized crime.
My fiance did a high-school exchange in Japan and mentioned that people with tattoos weren't welcome at onsen because that usually means Yakuza in Japan, and businesses want to steer clear of all of that. If businesses are making rules like that, it's pretty clearly a non-trivial issue.