CHINO, Japan, Aug. 15, 2024—Japanese public prosecutors ‘never say never again’ in leveling false charges against the innocent. When they lose court cases, they apologize and feign repentance but refuse to change their foundational approach toward people they arrest. That’s what they did in demanding capital punishment to a suspected person in a case having been fought over 40 years, and charging a senior bureaucrat with fabricating evidence in 2008.
More recently – apparently in light of growing public criticisms about public prosecutors – a court ordered a prosecutor to stand trial in response to a lawsuit, the first such court case–though the prosecutors office, with confidence that the prosecutor would prevail, is stonewalling about it with its policy of ‘it’s-our-decision-not-court’s’ to punish criminals. The Japanese judiciary and lawmakers, always on the prosecution side, are lukewarm about the case, raising doubts whether the man would be penalized.
Whatever the outcome, Tabuchi’s court case is likely to have great influence on future Japanese prosecutor and police criminal investigations.
At the center stage of this saga is Shinobu Yamagishi, 61, who had founded and managed property developer Pressance Corporation of Osaka was arrested on Dec. 16, 2019 by the Osaka Pubic Prosectors Office Special Investigation Department. He was relieved of his CEO post on Dec. 23, 2019 by the board of the publicly traded company.
What led to his arrest and 248 days of imprisonment and daily interrogations at the Osaka Retention Center – and his entire business – were false testimonies made by a Pressance employee, and a business associate who told the prosecutors that Yamagishi was an accomplice in a fraudulent Pressance loan transaction to the business associate, according to a Japan Federation of Bar Associations website. Yamagishi sued the Osaka Public Prosecutors Office’s prosecutor who was in charge of his case.
In more than 50 hours of interrogations of the Pressance employee, which were recorded both voice and video, Tabushi shouted, pounding the table loudly, apparently to solicit testimony that Yaamagishi conspired with him as well as other two arrested men in the fraudulent loan case. Worse, Tabuchi seemed to have ignored the fact that the interrogations were recorded, presumably with confidence that the prosecutors office would manage it to avoid lawyer and public scrutiny.
Yamagishi had been wrongly detanled for more than 200 days and he was told not guilty Oct. 28, 2021 by the Osaka District Court.
On Aug. 8, 2024, in response to Yamagishi’s lawsuit in June 2022, the Osaka High Court decided to try the prosecutor, Daisuke Tabuchi, 52, who was a key official investigating the Pressance loan case, for a Special Public Servant Violation and Intimidation law crime. Justice Koichi Murakoshi said in his ruling that Tabuchi in his interrogations used ‘coercive, insulting language, in unjust manner’ and ordered him to stand trial as defendant.
As had anticipated, despite its order to Tabuchi to stand trial, the high court authorized the prosecutors office to submit only 48 minutes of recording clips as evidence to be used in the upcoming Tabuchi trial out of about 50 days of recording, according to lawyers quoted by the Japanese press.
Tabuchi will be represented by a public prosecutor in coming court proceedings. At an Osaka District Court hearing on Aug. 11, 2024, Tabuchi agreed that his language used in questioning the Pressance employee was ‘inappropriate,’ according to media reports. Then the judge played part of the recorded voice and video in which Tabuchi was heard shouting at the defendant, ‘You’re lying… You’re a big criminal…Don’t BS. Don’t slight the prosecutors!…’ Tabuchi never apologized for his language.
Similar cases
Prosecutors’ false charges against Yamagishi are not uncommon. In the past, numerous others, including innocent ones, were unfairly charged and tried because of prosecutors’ illegal and unethical interrogation techniques.
Hakamada case – Iwao Hakamada, now 88, was arrested and charged for allegedly murdering four members of a family in Shizuoka Prefecture I 1966. He was given a death sentence but court had ordered a retrial for insufficient evidence presented by prosecutors. Retrial proceedings concluded on May 22, 2024, and the Shizuoka District Court is scheduled to deliver its ruling on Sept. 26, 2024. Prosecutors said only Hakamada, who was living in the family’s company billeting facility, was in the position to be able to kill the four persons. Hakamada admitted to the crime and had been imprisoned for nearly 48 years, then was released 10 years ago for his defense team’s demand for retrial.
Muraki case – In June 2009, Atsuko Muraki, director-general of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare’s Equal Employment, Child and Family Bureau, was falsely arrested by the Osaka Regional Public Prosecutors Special Investigation Department for allegedly assisting a welfare group to illegally receive postal serve discounts.
Muraki was told by prosecutors to change her statement and that as long as she refused to change, ‘you will receive a severe punishment, prison term!,’ according to a defense lawyer group website, though her penalty should have been light even if she acquiesced to the prosecutors’ demand. She was released by putting a bail in November 2009 and spending as long as 164 days in prosecutor custody, having been denied release on bail for a few times.
Teikoku Bank case – In 1948, 12 Teikoku Bank (now Sumitomo-Mitsui Bank) Shiinamachi branch employees were poisoned and murdered in a bank heist. Sadamichi Hirasawa, an artist and painter, was arrested but he did not admit to the crime until his death in prison cell at the age of 95 in 1987. Police and prosecutors interrogated Hirasawa nearly until his death but totally absent active physical evidence and having had to rely on Hirasawa’s admission to the crime, court could not deliver a sentence to him.
Prosecutors’ approach doesn’t change
Public prosecutors would occasionally bow their heads at news conferences for having forced defendants to sign fabricated interrogation records that they have not committed or said. They pledge that mistakes never would be repeated. But prosecutors aren’t giving up their coercive interrogation techniques even if courts reject cases to uphold defendants’ innocence.
This centuries-old practice dates back to the Edo period when the feudal lords and their cronies were virtual gods – as they were called ‘Okami,’ meaning ‘up high.’
The samurai class that did the modern prosecutor work always made sure that whatever the outcome of their deeds, they will come out fault-free, and for that, they didn’t bother leveling false charges and hanging innocent people.
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