Japan Lower House OKs Retrial System Reform Bill

Tokyo, June 16 (Jiji Press)–Japan’s House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, the country’s parliament, on Tuesday passed a bill to revamp the country’s retrial system. At a plenary meeting, the bill to revise the criminal procedure law was approved by a majority vote, with support from the Liberal Democratic Party-led ruling camp and Sanseito. The approval came after the bill was amended to include, in a supplementary provision, a ban on the use of evidence for purposes other than those intended and to include the disclosure of prosecutors’ evidence lists among the items to be considered in the system’s review every five years. Now backed by opposition Sanseito, the government-sponsored bill is expected to be enacted within the current Diet session ending on July 17 after clearing the House of Councillors, the upper chamber, where the ruling coalition lacks a majority. If enacted, this would mark the first revision to the retrial system since the criminal procedure law was established in 1948. Opposition parties, including the Centrist Reform Alliance, the Democratic Party for the People, Team Mirai and the Japanese Communist Party, voted against the bill. “The government bill leaves many loopholes for prosecutors and does not cater to those who were wrongfully convicted and their families,” CRA lawmaker Akira Hirabayashi said. For the upcoming Upper House deliberations, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and others plan to urge the government to establish a system under which evidence disclosure orders can be issued at the discretion of courts. The government-sponsored bill calls for prohibiting, in principle, prosecutors’ appeals against court decisions to initiate retrials, widely seen as contributing to delays in providing relief for those wrongly convicted, while allowing such appeals only in exceptional cases where there are sufficient grounds. The bill is also designed to allow courts to order prosecutors to disclose evidence only when they deem such disclosure appropriate, taking into account the relevance and necessity of the evidence to the retrial petition. It also prohibits, with penalties, the provision of disclosed evidence to third parties for purposes unrelated to the retrial proceedings. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]