Arbitrary evidence disclosure to blame for false accusations
Two men were acquitted Tuesday in a retrial of a murder-robbery case that occurred 44 years ago.
Shoji Sakurai and Takao Sugiyama, both 64, won acquittal at the Tsuchiura branch of the Mito District Court over the murder-robbery of a 62-year-old carpenter in the Fukawa district of Tonemachi, Ibaraki Prefecture, in 1967. Slightly more than 100,000 yen was stolen.
In handing down a ruling on what is known as the Fukawa case, the presiding judge said, "There is no objective evidence to link the defendants to the crime."
Sakurai and Sugiyama, whose life imprisonment sentences were finalized by the Supreme Court in 1978, were released on parole in 1996. In the retrial that began in July last year, prosecutors again demanded life imprisonment.
The prosecutors will study whether to appeal the case, but given that the evidence they presented has been totally discredited, it would be best if they abandon the idea of taking the case to a higher court. This would finalize the acquittal for the two defendants.
The Fukawa case is the seventh since the end of World War II in which defendants sentenced to death or to life imprisonment have been acquitted in a retrial. In March last year, a defendant in the so-called Ashikaga case was acquitted of the murder of a 4-year-old girl in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture, in 1990.
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Credibility of confessions
All those involved in the legal system should take a serious view of the latest failure to prevent the filing of false charges. They must closely examine the situation to stop false accusations being made.
In the retrial of the Fukawa case, the prosecutors attempted to prove their case by focusing on the confessions of the two defendants and a local resident's account that placed them at the victim's house.
The ruling stressed that the defendants' accounts taken during the investigation in which they confessed to the charges lacked consistency. It said "the possibility cannot be ruled out that the depositions based on the defendants' accounts were compiled under the guidance of the prosecutors."
This indicates investigations that rely heavily on confessions often result in false accusations. This was apparent in the Fukawa case.
The court also said the testimony of the witness lacked credibility, as another witness, a female acquaintance of Sugiyama, testified that "the man I saw near the crime scene was not Mr. Sugiyama but someone else."
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Disclose all evidence
The deposition that included this testimony was disclosed by the prosecutors for the first time in 2001 when Sugiyama and Sakurai applied for a retrial for the second time. The deposition proved a decisive factor behind the court agreeing to the retrial.
The court did not totally accept the credibility of her testimony. However, if the testimony had been made known much earlier, the original trial might have followed a different course.
The prosecutors obviously made arbitrary judgments about what evidence to disclose. Evidence that would work to their disadvantage was withheld.
With the introduction of the lay judge system, prosecutors are, in principle, obliged to submit all evidence related to points of contention before the first hearing is held. However, prosecutors tend to keep almost all the evidence under their control.
Trials can be conducted fairly only if prosecutors disclose all the evidence, even that which might work to their disadvantage. Judges, for their part, should encourage disclosure of evidence.
3rd-party panel must get to bottom of nuclear crisis
How could such a serious accident happen at one of Japan's nuclear power plants, which were touted as being absolutely infallibly safe? This question must be answered clearly.
The government on Tuesday decided to set up a third-party expert panel to investigate the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. The panel is expected to compile a midterm report by the end of this year.
Yotaro Hatamura, a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, was appointed chairman of the panel. Hatamura is known for his scientific research into human error. The panel is to have about 10 members.
Hatamura is also an expert in mechanical engineering, and has argued that learning from errors instead of from successful experiences will lead to better understanding. He maintains the "Failure Knowledge Database," in which accidents in various fields, including their backgrounds, have been recorded, investigated and analyzed.
In probing the nuclear crisis, we hope Hatamura will make use of techniques he has developed in his error research to figure out how to prevent similar accidents from recurring and improve safety at nuclear power plants. We hope the panel will quickly compile useful information and put it to work at other nuclear plants.
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Man-made disaster
TEPCO said in its analysis of the status of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant that the power station's Nos. 2 and 3 reactors likely suffered core meltdowns, in addition to the previously acknowledged meltdown in the No. 1 reactor. This is an unprecedented and serious disaster.
The direct cause of the nuclear crisis was apparently the loss of the reactors' cooling functions due to damage from the colossal tsunami following the March 11 earthquake. However, the utility cannot attribute its inability to prevent the successive meltdowns solely to the natural disaster.
TEPCO's safety measures to be taken when the cooling functions were lost are flawed. The utility's procedures called for preventing core meltdowns by opening the reactors' valves to release internal pressure as a last resort. But the company put off taking this step.
This and other factors that contributed to the man-made disaster must be thoroughly investigated. The panel should look into a wide variety of matters, including the responses of the government and TEPCO after the crisis began, and nuclear safety regulations of past governments.
The government has granted the panel the ability to question Cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister Naoto Kan, and bureaucrats over the nuclear crisis. The panel's investigation process will be disclosed to the public. This is only natural, as distrust in the safety of Japan's nuclear plants is growing at home and abroad.
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Detailed record needed
Meanwhile, the government has apparently not kept detailed records of discussions that were held to decide how to deal with this historic crisis. This is cause for grave concern.
For instance, some experts have said the situation in the No. 1 reactor might have been aggravated because seawater injections to cool it were temporarily suspended. Although the Prime Minister's Office is alleged to have ordered the suspension, the facts are shrouded in mystery because of the lack of detailed documentation.
The panel will have a difficult time investigating if it has to rely heavily on testimony based on memory. The panel must get to work by preserving any existing documents, memos and other evidence as soon as possible.
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