Relevent in today's news: In the Wall Street Journal it noted: "Behind the scenes, according to people familiar with the matter, Mr. Ghosn’s advisers had been studying several scenarios to spare him a Japanese trial, where more than 99% of those indicted are convicted, according to official statistics."
That is ...incredibly high. Like China high. Facing those odds I think Mr. Ghosn made the right decision to flee.
One of the reasons for that is that Japanese prosecutors are much more reluctant to take a case to court which they are not 100% sure will lead to conviction, meaning the overall number of courtcases are smaller.
That said, there are reportedly very real problems with a) foreigners getting a fair trial and b) confession being forced under duress.
Just a reminder that you're not entitled to having a lawyer present while Japanese police interrogate you. Once arrested in Japan, you essentially lose all basic rights.
The police can also keep you in jail for months without charging you with anything. This pretty much ends your career and family life.
All of the above has happened to e.g. tourists accused of stealing a single dumpling.
Forced confessions are the bulk of what makes up that 99% conviction rate. Japanese lawyers always advise their clients to produce a confession regardless of the circumstances.
Non-natives are strongly advised to follow the law to the very letter and that they're fucked if ever arrested no matter how insignificant the infringement might first appear - and police will downplay the severity of infringement to make you confess.
The Japanese criminal justice system is only marginally better than Chinese. It's one of the areas where they just failed to advance as a society.
Technically, the police have 23 days to charge someone before they must be released. In serious crimes, police can (and likely will) re-arrest the person on a different charge.
I very much doubt that the police have held someone for months for stealing a dumpling, though.
In addition, for everyone mentioning the 99% conviction rate, it's important to keep the other part of that in mind as well: Japanese prosecutors typically drop ~50% of cases.
Do you have a source for a tourist being arrested and held for months for stealing a single dumpling?
I don't doubt there are problems, but this honestly doesn't sound plausible, and Googling I can't find any reference.
I can believe a tourist being (rightly) arrested for stealing something (even if small value), and I can believe people being held in jail for months without being charged in the case of very serious suspected crimes (e.g. large-scale fraud or suspected murder), but I can't find any evidence of the two combined.
You're making it sound like everyone should avoid visiting Japan for tourism at all because you might be incarcerated for months on a misunderstanding... which just doesn't match any of my experience there, or their thriving tourism industry.
Japan has taken steps to remedy confessions being forced under duress.
As of last year, all interrogations for serious crimes (i.e., trials that will have lay judges) must be audio and video recorded, as well as any interrogations of suspects that might have mental disabilities [1].
Of course, that doesn't address issues of lengthy imprisonment before charges are filed, but it's a step in the right direction.
Yoshie Shiratori had the same problems with forced confessions in the 1930s when he was first imprisoned and supposedly major steps were steps were taken to remediate these problems back in 1948.
Sounds like the problems are deep-rooted & systemic.
I don't understand why confessions are admitted as evidence at all. Anyone can confess to anything. It's only valuable if it leads to concrete evidence, i.e., "I did it and the body is buried in the wall with the cursed beating heart."
In Japan, confessions are intended to work as you suggest:
>Article 38 of Japan's Constitution categorically requires that "no person shall be convicted or punished in cases where the only proof against a suspect is his/her own confession," In practice, this constitutional requirement takes a form of safeguarding known as the "revelation of secret" (Himitsu no Bakuro, lit. "outing of secret")...
>...for confession to be a valid evidence for conviction, the Japanese court requires confession to include revelation of verifiable factual matter that only the perpetrator of the crime could have known about, such as the location of an undiscovered body or the time and place the murder weapon was purchased, a fact about the crime scene, etc. Furthermore, to safeguard against the possibility that the interrogator has implanted such knowledge into the confession, the prosecutor must prove that such revelation of secret was unknown to the police until the point of confession.
> One of the reasons for that is that Japanese prosecutors are much more reluctant to take a case to court which they are not 100% sure will lead to conviction, meaning the overall number of courtcases are smaller
What's the evidence for this claim? Do we have dropped cases rates for Japan versus other countries?
(Reduced incarceration rates are sometimes cited. But that's impossible to separate from reduced criminality, or the legal system's propensity to jail versus punish in other ways.)
Taken from Wikipedia [1], citing the paper "Why Is the Japanese Conviction Rate So High?" by Ramseyer and Rasmusen.
>In the U.S., the federal government employs 27,985 lawyers and the states employ another 38,242 (of which 24,700 are state prosecutors). In Japan, with about a third of U.S. population, the entire government employs a mere 2,000. Despite Japan having a low crime rate, such numbers create a significant case overload for prosecutors. In the U.S., there are 480 arrests (96 serious cases) per year per state prosecutor. (The actual figure is lower as some are prosecuted in federal court). In Japan, the figure is 700 per year per prosecutor. In the U.S., a rough estimate is that 42% of arrests in felony cases result in prosecution - while in Japan, the figure is only 17.5%.
>In murder, U.S. police arrested 19,000 people for 26,000 murders, in which 75% were prosecuted and courts convicted 12,000 people. In Japan, 1,800 people were arrested for 1,300 murders, but prosecutors tried only 43%.
The US isn't exactly known for it's fair and perfect legal system (particularly if you're brown), so the fact that Japan's numbers are even higher says something.
I agree it's not perfect, but I'm not sure "lower conviction rates = better" is correct in all scenarios.
That means the country is arresting and bringing the wrong people to trial.
In an ideal world you're only arresting and convicting people with clear and obvious guilt. That would probably look like a society with very strong individual rights, extremely low (near 0) bias and a high conviction rate.
Errrrr, you're talking about the "millions of dollars tax evasion" Carlos Goshn, isn't it? I mean... You don't need to be in China to land jail time for evading millions of dollars in taxes. You talk like you should go to jail for hiding hundred of millions without paying taxes.
I was originally unsympathetic to his case as well, but reading into it it does seem like he's not getting a fair case. Unlike the US where court cases are a competition between two sides, Japan uses a single prosecutor that makes a kind of report to the court, so him getting treated unfairly is significant cause for concern.
He was held for a long period of time without external contact, and has in many ways been declared guilty even though evidence is lacking.
Tax evasion is a serious crime, and serious crimes deserve good faith investigation, not just sacrificing the first convenient figure.
"In Canada, the national conviction rate is about 97%. This does not include cases in which the charges are dropped, which comprise about one-third of criminal cases. Absent Quebec, the province with the lowest conviction rate, the figure is 99%"
"In Japan, the criminal justice system has a conviction rate that exceeds 99%, including guilty plea cases. This has been attributed to low prosecutorial budgets impelling understaffed prosecutors to bring only the most obviously guilty defendants to trial."
The difference is that the Japanese system achieves those numbers in very different ways from the Canadian one [0].
> Many confessions are extracted under duress. Some of those who admit guilt are plainly innocent, as recent exonerations have shown
> Common criminal suspects may be held in detention for 23 days without charge. Many have only minimal contact with a lawyer. Few interrogations are recorded, and then not in their entirety, so there is not much to stop interrogators piling in. Physical torture is rare, but sleep deprivation, which is just as effective, is common. So are various other forms of psychological coercion. Some interrogators use moral blackmail (“Think of the shame you are bringing on your family”). A few, if they are convinced that the suspect is guilty, simply fabricate a confession and press the suspect into signing it.
This is as far from "justice" as it can be and puts those numbers in a very shameful light.
Whether the ends justify the means is up for debate but these methods are officially incompatible with most western democracy values (the US being one major exception - Guantanamo) and more in line with authoritarian states.
....so the Canadian conviction rate is about 2/3 once you include dropped charges. The Japanese figure was 99% from indictment. 97% is not the comparable stat in this case.
What does a high conviction rate have to do with this? Maybe we should turn it around and say that other jurisdictions' prosecutors are wasting money prosecuting cases they are not sure of?
In a nation with strong rule of law and in particular a presumption of innocence and robust due process a few percent of people will get off simply because the prosecutors make mistakes (either intentional or accidental), on top of people who are actually innocent. A 99% conviction rate suggests that such protections don’t exist in the Japanese system and it is thus suspect in terms of respecting human rights.
A balance ideally struck within actual court rooms, not outside it. Otherwise the prosecutors turn into judge, jury and executioner and you lose the point of the court system to begin with.
Why is it a requirement in nations with strong rule of law that prosecutors make mistakes? This logic is baffling. Could it not simply be that prosecutors in Japan are very, very careful?
Of course, as others have said, the reality is that prosecutors only go to trial if they have what they view as a guaranteed conviction, and the evidence is typically a confession.
Prosecutors make mistakes everywhere because they are human and have all of the negative traits which go along with that. With due process requirements this normally leads to dismissal of the charges or acquittals. In Japan it apparently leads to soft core torture to coerce a confession which can guarantee a conviction.
That's very fair. Anecdotally my Japan-living friends speculate it is a mix of both the (positive) effect you suggest and confessions manufactured under duress.
During my travels I was advised to be particularly cautious about treating police courteously and following rules to the letter because getting arrested is a much bigger deal than elsewhere.
> more than 99% of those indicted are convicted, according to official statistics." That is ...incredibly high. Like China high.
High conviction rates aren't inherently bad. Bias and a lack of individual rights are bad (which it sounds like are present here).
In an ideal society though with strong individual rights and little to no bias, a high conviction rate would mean less innocent people getting prosecuted which is a good thing.
Ghosn fancies himself an elite and was scared of the treatment he would receive in a real jail. He was expecting house arrest, as many white collar criminals receive in western jurisdictions. I have little to no sympathy for his “plight”.
Thank God for Japan treating elites the same as the less well-heeled. Western jurisdictions should take note.
House arrest? Minimum-security prisons such as Allenwood have been referred to as "Club Fed". But I don't remember anyone in the US serving nominal jail time under house arrest. Pre-trial detention sure, but that goes for blue-collar suspects also.
yeah good thinking. you could also think that in a country where being wrong can end your career (literally ended several prime ministers ones) then you won't charge a guy if you don't have strong proof that he is guilty. but you're right Mr. Ghosn, evading tax, using company money for his own good was right to flee.
That is ...incredibly high. Like China high. Facing those odds I think Mr. Ghosn made the right decision to flee.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ghosns-escape-followed-weeks-of...