EDITORIAL: 'Stomping' verdict

03/22/2008

The Fukuoka District Court on Tuesday rendered a verdict that harshly condemned humiliating tactics used by a former police officer investigating alleged election fraud during voting for the Kagoshima prefectural assembly in 2003.

The presiding judge labeled the actions of the interrogator as "aberrant and illegal" and sentenced him to 10 months in prison, suspended for three years.

At issue was the way the officer forced an innocent suspect to stomp on paper sheets containing the names of his father and grandchildren. The practice is called fumiji.

The defendant, a former assistant inspector with the Kagoshima prefectural police, was found guilty of violating the law against special public servants' abuse of authority through assault or humiliation.

The stomping episode occurred during the inspector's questioning of a hotel operator in the suspected vote-buying case who had submitted to voluntary questioning. When the suspect kept silent, the inspector attempted to get him to talk by writing on sheets of paper the names of his grandchildren and father, as well as the words: "Please become an honest grandfather soon." The sheets were placed on the ground, with the inspector then grasping the man by the ankle and making him tramp directly on the sheets.

The hotel operator felt humiliated at being forced to tread on symbols of respect and love of his family members, causing him severe psychological stress.

The stern verdict was appropriate.

Interrogators found to have committed violent acts against suspects or humiliating them psychologically or physically can face prison terms of up to seven years. Almost all past applications of this law have involved cases of violence. The significance of Tuesday's ruling, which took a harsh view of what the person interrogated suffered psychologically, cannot be overstated.

The problems with the Kagoshima prefectural police in this case are not limited to the stomping incident. It turned out that the hotel operator was not even indicted in the end. The 12 other people eventually charged were later acquitted.

Castigated in the ruling, therefore, were the strong-armed tactics of an investigation that sought indictments through coerced confessions obtained by any possible means.

Investigations that rely on extracting confessions from suspects continue to be fixtures at other police departments as well, posing a serious problem for the nation's law-enforcing authorities at large. In response, the National Police Agency has compiled guidelines for proper investigations, including the monitoring of questioning by police divisions other than the investigation units.

Improving the means used in investigations is easier said than done, however. These are not procedures guaranteed to produce results even when conducted by the book. There may be cases when the interrogation methods need to be adjusted for certain suspects, and sometimes it might be necessary to push and pull.

At the very least, however, techniques that trample on people's feelings or insult them outright cannot be counted upon to dig up the truth. False confessions, furthermore, also run the risk of inviting bogus accusations and convictions.

In past editorials, we have pointed out the critical need to introduce a system for the filming and recording of all stages of criminal interrogations, in order to help avoid a recurrence of cases like this.

Though the NPA continued to drag its feet on this suggestion, it has at last followed in the footsteps of public prosecutors in moving to partially record and film investigations on a trial basis. This is a step in the right direction.

Under the planned citizen judge system to be introduced in 2009, in which citizens will act as judges together with professional judges, intensive hearings will be used to lighten the burden of the lay judges. In cases when defendants choose to deny charges due to what they claim are coerced confessions, the conventional system of long and drawn out deliberations over whether a written statement of confession is credible will no longer be allowed.

At such times, videotaped questioning sessions would also provide palpable evidence in forming more accurate judgments.

The lay judge system will commence by May 2009. It's time to terminate the old interrogation methods in favor of adopting new approaches.

--The Asahi Shimbun, March 21(IHT/Asahi: March 22,2008)