First Case of Opening Trial against Public Prosecutor

Osaka High Court decided to open a criminal trial against a public prosecutor who had been alleged to have abused a suspect with insulting words. The court accepted the request of the suspect who had been found innocent. It will be the first time for a public prosecutor to stand trial on its fault in investigation. The point of the trial is expected not to be a personal failure but structural problem of public prosecutors’ office.

The request of opening a trial was submitted by former president of a real estate firm in Osaka, Shinobu Yamagishi. Yamagishi was arrested with suspicion of being an accomplice of embezzlement in business by the Special Investigation Division of Osaka Public Prosecutors Office in December 2019. A chief director of an educational corporation borrowed 1.8 billion yen from Yamagishi and paid back with asset of the corporation.

 

Yamagishi was in custody for 248 days. According to the request for trial, a prosecutor who interviewed to Yamagishi, named Daisuke Tabuchi, hurled harsh words to Yamagishi. Tabuchi accused Yamagishi, saying that Yamagishi was an absurd man who would make a lie and not apologize about it. “A public prosecutor has power to ruin life of a human,” Tabuchi allegedly said to Yamagishi. Osaka District Court found Yamagishi as innocent in 2021.

 

Yamagishi argued that the interview would be applied to a crime of assault and cruelty by special public officers. Osaka District Court approved that the interview was cruel, but did not decide on whether the prosecutor should be stand on a trial. However, the high court found that Tabuchi should be on trial, because it was dangerous enough to induce false confession.

 

Osaka High Court pointed out that the cruel interview was made under voice and video recording, the system which had been introduced after an incident in Osaka Public Prosecutors Office in which evidence of a crime was fabricated in 2010. The court demanded public prosecutors’ office seriously reviewing its investigation as an organization, requiring not to attribute it to the personality of a prosecutor.

 

A request of opening a trial is a legal system for the people, when a public officer made misconduct and public prosecutor did not indict it. There were 22 cases for opening trial between 1949 and 2022, out of which 13 cases were found innocent and 9 were guilty. Those cases were mainly about abuse or cruelty by policemen. Tabuchi’s case will make the first case for a public prosecutor.

 

Last month, the president of solar power generation firm filed a lawsuit against the Special Investigation Division of Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office on their interview with inappropriate words. It is doubted that the treatment of suspects by public prosecutors in Japan does not abide by principle of human rights. Investigation on a major evil would not exempt the prosecutors from their offensive interview.

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