Reply #48: The amount of power accorded the police, both officially and unofficially [View All]

[Euromutt]

For starters, Japanese police have pretty wide powers of search and seizure (much wider than those permitted under Terry v. Ohio in the U.S.), and even in the (unlikely) event that a search is ruled illegal, that does not render the evidence seized inadmissible.

After being arrested, a criminal suspect can be held by police for 48 hours without being able to see a lawyer or indeed having any contact with the outside world. After the 48 hours are up, the public prosecutor can order him held for another 24 hours. After that, the prosecutor can ask a judge for permission to hold him for another ten days, and another ten days after that. That's 23 days before even being formally charged with an offense. There have been cases of suspects being held for over 400 days (during which they were subjected to 700 hours of interrogation) before even being brought to trial.

During that time, the suspect can be interrogated at any time, for just about any length of time, without a lawyer present and without the interrogation being recorded. Criminal defendants have frequently been found to bear the marks of beatings, and a suspiciously high number of detainees suffer fatal "accidents" while in custody (not unlike the way suspects used to "slip in the shower" with remarkable frequency at John Vorster square police station in Johannesburg during the Apartheid era). Ultimately, 95% of suspects arrested sign a confession, including those who are later exonerated. Essentially, the cops try to sweat--and if that fails, beat and torture--a confession out of every suspect, and everybody knows it.

Both the prosecution service and notionally independent judiciary have zero interest in curtailing this practice, because it works in their interest; prosecutors build their careers on securing convictions (and losing even one case, but definitely two cases, can trash his career), while judges make promotion based on the speed with which their clear their caseloads. It is therefore actively in their interest to turn a blind eye when police make it possible to convict a defendant by beating a confession out of him. Furthermore, prosecutors are not obliged to disclose evidence they choose not to use, including exculpatory evidence.

The best way to avoid criminal prosecution, and thus conviction, in Japan is if you're able to resist the beatings and not confess. The judiciary places a high degree of importance on the defendant's confession, so prosecutors are extremely reluctant to go to trial without a signed confession. The perverse thing is that the people best able to resist police beatings are professional criminals, such as members of the yakuza.

All these practices run directly counter to Articles 34 and 38 of the Japanese constitution (http://www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/ja00000_.html), but nobody in a position to do anything about it cares.