Japan Govt Unwilling to Have Evidence Lists Disclosed

Tokyo, May 27 (Jiji Press)–Japan’s Justice Ministry showed reluctance Wednesday over the disclosure of lists of evidence deemed necessary for courts to decide whether to reopen convicted cases. In the just-started discussions on bills to revise the criminal procedure law at the House of Representatives Judicial Affairs Committee, Tomomi Inada, former policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and Chinami Nishimura, deputy head of the leading opposition Centrist Reform Alliance, demanded that prosecutors disclose the evidence lists. A government-introduced bill stipulates that courts order prosecutors to submit evidence if they conclude that ordering the submission is appropriate after examining the evidence’s relevance to retrial petitions and necessity. Inada stressed that prosecutors should fulfill their responsibility of presenting wide-ranging evidence while Nishimura proposed that courts order evidence submission unless they find the action inappropriate. Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi tried to ease concerns that the bill is seeking to narrow the scope of evidence disclosure, saying that court-acknowledged relevant evidence would have a substantially wide extent. “Without the lists, evidence can be specified by recapitulative explanations,” Atsushi Sato, the ministry’s Criminal Affairs Bureau chief, said while underscoring the importance of protecting privacy. The Lower House committee also discussed the bill’s controversial clause banning the use of evidence for purposes other than retrial proceedings. Opposition parties, including the CRA, have called for deleting it. But Sato argued that there is a similar privacy provision for ordinary trials and that an imbalance would be created if new retrial rules lack the clause. He also said it will be legal to read out part of confession statements or summaries of the statements in court and to verbally inform reporters about the statements. However, he added, reading out them fully may be banned. Amendment ideas jointly proposed by the CRA, Team Mirai and the Japanese Communist Party were put up for discussions at the committee meeting along with the government bill. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]