How can this travesty of justice ever be redeemed?

Prosecutors on Oct. 8 announced that they will not appeal the Sept. 26 ruling of the Shizuoka District Court that acquitted Iwao Hakamada, 88, who had been sentenced to death 56 years ago over the murders of four family members.

Finally, Hakamada’s innocence has been confirmed.

The wrongful conviction not only cost Hakamada his freedom for nearly half a century, but it also kept him in constant terror of being executed any day, causing him to develop mental disorders.

For these grievous violations of his human rights, the law enforcement and judicial organs concerned are immensely responsible.

FABRICATED EVIDENCE

The Shizuoka court not only acquitted Hakamada, but it also stated unequivocally that police officers and prosecutors had collaborated in treating Hakamada inhumanely to force him to confess, and that investigators had fabricated evidence, including five clothing items, that were critical to their case.

The prosecutor-general criticized the court for making these statements. But the same points had been made twice by courts in the past, when they ruled in favor of retrying the case. Surely the prosecutor-general couldn’t have forgotten this.

Police and the prosecutors’ office must thoroughly re-examine the case by going over their records to ascertain what had happened in the course of the investigation, court hearings and retrial requests.

Without their heartfelt apology to Hakamada, they will never regain their lost credibility.

The courts, too, are responsible for re-examining the Hakamada case. From the court of first instance to the Supreme Court, every verdict was “guilty.”

And although the first appeal for retrial was filed 43 years ago, everything moved at a tortuously slow pace until prosecutors agreed to abide by the discovery process when a second appeal for retrial was filed.

In the 1980s, four capital cases before Hakamada’s were retried, and all the defendants were found innocent. In the past 15 years, life-timers in the Ashikaga, Fukawa and Tokyo Electric Power Co. cases were acquitted in retrials.

In other words, even in relatively recent years, wrongful convictions were not rare.

At the time of his arrest, Hakamada was widely presumed guilty in news reports. The Asahi Shimbun takes that mistake to heart and resolves never to repeat it again.

OVERHAUL RETRIAL PROCEDURE

Eliminating misjudgments is obviously the goal, but trials conducted by humans cannot be expected to be completely error-free. A retrial serves as an emergency relief measure.

But there is next to no transparency in how appeals for retrials are processed. And even if the court does rule for a retrial, the prosecution can appeal that ruling, which can result in the case dragging on for years until the defendant is too old to really benefit from the retrial system.

This was exactly what happened in Hakamada’s case, and it could apply to others, too.

The biggest flaw in the system is that the Code of Criminal Procedure has virtually no provisions for how an appeal for retrial should proceed. This usually results in the process being left to the discretion of the judge in charge.

We believe now is the perfect time to iron out this major legal wrinkle. And there, discovery is the key.

In the Hakamada case, any evidence that could have led to an acquittal in a retrial was held by investigators until the prosecution reluctantly released the items under court orders in the second appeal for retrial.

In any regular trial, there are rules of discovery. What we now need are assurances that investigators will release a full list of evidence in their possession as demanded by parties filing for retrials.

It has been quite some time since retrials were dubbed “doors that don’t open.” It is extremely rare for courts to recognize the existence of “new evidence that clearly points to (the defendant’s) innocence” and declare a retrial.

Rather than allowing arguments over whether to grant the prosecution’s appeal or go ahead with a retrial, the system should be revised so that a retrial can start immediately. The prosecution and the defense could then present their respective arguments.

When the amended Code of Criminal Procedure took effect in 2019, allowing audio or video recording of interrogations, the Justice Ministry set up a council of experts to review the retrial system.

However, the council has yet to recommend a fundamental overhaul of the system. The urgent task now is to identify exactly what needs to be changed, based on reviews of actual cases, including Hakamada’s.

In an Asahi Shimbun survey of sitting and former judges who have handled retrials, 15 of the 18 respondents deemed the current system “inadequate” and commented that “the flawed procedures are rendering it difficult to save innocent victims of wrongful conviction.”

This past spring, a supra-partisan federation of Diet members was formed with an eye to revise the retrial system. It is the Diet’s duty to proactively lead public discussion of this issue.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IRREVERSIBLE

Had Hakamada been executed, we obviously would never have seen him being acquitted.

The death penalty system raises all sorts of fundamental questions, including the state’s right to take the lives of individuals. It is now time to stop and think about abolishing this system, if only because people can be put to death for something they never did.

For years, Hakamada vigorously protested his innocence. But after his death sentence was finalized by the Supreme Court, his sister, Hideko, and his older brother began to notice changes in his mental state every time they visited him in prison.

Terrified of never knowing when he would be executed, Hakamada became delusional. For some years, he refused all visitors.

The inhumanity of the death sentence lay in the fact that although Hakamada’s defense team and Hideko continued to fight for a retrial, his own resolve to clear his name appeared to have dissipated.

As of September, 108 individuals were on death row, some of whom, like Hakamada, have been imprisoned for decades since their sentences were finalized.

No matter what the punishment, the dignity of every individual must be protected. But the Justice Ministry has never indicated how this should be done.

The travesty that Hakamada was forced to endure should compel the parties responsible to resolve the many problems inherent in the nation’s criminal justice system.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 9