> He had essentially zero chance of being acquitted

I think GP was referring to the fact that Japan has an over 99% conviction rate.

Even if we presume that Japan has unusually high quality prosecutors and judges, that rate is so high that I think it’s reasonable to presume a fair number of innocent people are getting convicted (which happens lots of places, of course, but Japan’s conviction rate is still unusual).

"Scholars say the biggest reason for Japan's very high conviction rate is the country's low prosecution rate and the way Japan calculates its conviction rate is different from other countries.[2][3][4] According to them, Japanese prosecutors will prosecute only the very few cases in which they are most likely to be guilty and not many others."

https://web.archive.org/web/20220712033655/https://www.nippo...

I don't think it's reasonable to assume anything happens if there's an alternative explanation.

The 99% rate is NOT because the system (prosecutors, judges) is "good", the rate is so high because system is structured to bully anyone arrested to admit to the crimes. You're basically coerced into confession, whether or not you did it.

There's a simple way to test this:

What percentage of convictions are accompanied by confessions?

I don't know the answer to that, actually.

There is another factor to it - not trying cases which aren't certain victories as joining that 1% of the conviction rate is an extremely shameful failure. The conviction rate is a "smell" regardless of how you slice it.

> "He was the victim of Nissan executives who didn't like having a gaijin be their boss:" Prove it.

Oh, sure. Like underhanded whisper campaigns and unspoken agreements are susceptible to "proof."