Update: American teens arrested

Where have I heard this before….oh yea, right here on Japan Probe 5 million times on any post that even mentions the military. thhhattts wheeree.

You still haven’t said anything, and made a point of nothing.

You’re telling me about Japanese law based on a fictional movie. Well done. Who’s going to believe you know anything now?

If you have first hand experience, why don’t you give us all the details in documents and case numbers and all the usual details such as how and why it all happened, down to the supposed mistake that the Japanese police and the courts made in your experience and your friend’s incarceration?

We’re all so tired of fools like you going around bashing people over the heads about how the Japanese have no sense of justice. We get enough of the mistakes we make here in the US, for crying out loud, with the police beatings, the corruption, of people like OJ walking and the like, being allowed to go about their business.

So please, do not use a movie as an example, because we also have loads of Hollywood movies to say exactly the same thing about our own broken laws in the US. So shut it.

whats wrong with pointing out flaws anyhow?

Kevin,

1) That’s not how arguing works. If you make a claim, the other person doesn’t have to prove it false, you have to prove it’s true.

Otherwise you get statements like this:

Me: There are Martians in Ikebukuro!

You: No there aren’t.

Me: Yes there are! Prove there aren’t!

Do you see how retarded that is? Well, that’s essentially what you wrote.

2) If you claim to have personal experience showing your validity in making a claim, you have to prove it.

Otherwise you get things like this;

Me: My penis is 43 centimeters long.

You: No it’s not, that’s impossible. Prove it.

Me: I don’t want to prove it because it’s personal information.

You: Then I don’t believe you.

Me: Why are you so argumentative!!!!??!?!?!

Do you see how retarded that is? That’s essentially what you wrote.

Now, try and keep up with the argument. You are about to prove that you have been arrested, and about to show that you know something about Japanese law that wasn’t written about on GaijinPot. And we are all waiting anxiously for your contribution.

Does lower conviction rate mean there is less forced confession?
If Japanese prosecutor pressed charge against innocent people with less reliable evidences and made the conviction rate lower, would it make Japanese legal system more just ?

There are cases and possible cases of forced of confession, as I indicate on the wiki article above, which includes the case on NYT article you cited, and there are wrongfully convicted cases in U.S. They are serious issues we have to tackle.
But I am not sure how the conviction rate comes into the picture.

Pew Pew, you’re not worth any kind of real answer.

James Watt, wouldn’t you say that my conviction rate argument would support my claim that the legal system isn’t exactly fair?

You guys seem to have repeatedly skipped over my comment about the guy who was wrongfully imprisoned for 17 years and was released this year. So here’s a

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200910220104.html

Im done with this, my opinion and experiences are my own and if you feel I need more examples thats your opinion, but Im not writing a term paper here, Im making a post. No one everquestions anything when they post negative crap about America. I say Japanese cops are skilled in the art of bullshit and I get this dick knuckle pew pew attacking me because he literally has nothing better to do. lame

”the biggest factor in the high conviction rate is the lack of jury trials”

”In America, where a right to trial by jury is in the constitution, the vast majority of cases result in plea-bargains (so do not go to trial) or concern minor offences, which are normally dealt with by a single judge. In Britain, only 1% of criminal cases end up before juries, which rarely deal with inquests, either.

Britain is seeking to restrict juries even further. ”
ーーThe jury is out
Feb 12th 2009 (economist)

Does that suggest Britain has high conviction rate?

lol I give up man I gotta study for finals, I tap out.

I think American cops are bullshit artists too, but this is a site about Japan.

If you look at my original post I’m not bashing Japan I just wanted to know if they were supplied a translator, were they they given a statement to sign in Japanese,and what the mandatory prison sentence was. But I didnt get any help or constructive answers at all! I got told to shut up because of one debatable statement that I made. You guys are kind of dicks, excluding Ponta.

pixel_bomber,

Just for some information.

Not necessarily, if anything I think the biggest factor in the high conviction rate is the lack of jury trials and the fact that the police tend to not bother pursuing cases that are not likely to lead to a conviction. I don’t know that they are directly related to forced confessions.

One claims that the reason for high conviction rate is mostly because of public prosecutor’s tendency to avoid losing a suit. He says that the ratio of the number of criminal suits compared to the total number of arrest cases is quite low instead, and the conviction-per-arrest rate seems to be not so different from many other developed countries’ conviction rate after all.

One of the most serious issue of Japanese police currently seems to be lack (insufficiency?) of full-recording (by, e.g., video cameras) of interrogation process and its availability to attorneys or the general public. This is an important point of some of the U.S. military people’s opposition to Japanese police’s requests for handing over (before an official charge).

pixel_bomber,

It seems to be very likely that introducing the jury system would change the situation drastically. The person who gave me an explanation of the high conviction rate also implied that public prosecutors and judges are extremely similar each other regarding decision making on whether the accused is guilty or not. So, if it is indeed true, the problem is that it is actually the public prosecutors who mostly contribute to the judgement of criminal cases, not the judges. The jury system may introduce confusion to public prosecutors since the result would be highly unpredictable, resulting in decrease of the conviction rate.