Expert Witnesses Demand Amendment to Retrial Reform Bill

Tokyo, June 25 (Jiji Press)–Expert witnesses invited by Japanese opposition parties on Thursday took issue with a government bill to reform the country’s retrial system and demanded amendments to it. At the Judicial Affairs Committee of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet, the Japanese parliament, expert witnesses said that the bill’s revised provisions regarding the scope of evidence disclosure and the prohibition on using evidence for purposes other than trials are insufficient. The bill to revise the Code of Criminal Procedure limits the scope of evidence that courts may order public prosecutors to submit to that related to an appeal for retrials. “The scope of evidence needed for submission orders differs from that necessary for retrial petitioners to establish their claim,” said Naohiro Taoka, a lawyer and an expert witness invited by opposition parties. “The range should not be limited to evidence related to retrial petitions,” he added. “There is a very real risk that evidence proving innocence would not be submitted,” said Kie Takahira, a professor at Hitotsubashi University’s Graduate School of Law. She called for the bill to stipulate that courts should order evidence disclosure that allows petitioners to support retrial petitions and to obtain new evidence. Taoka and Takahira requested the disclosure of evidence inventories in order to prevent investigation authorities from concealing evidence and ensure that important evidence is disclosed. By contrast, “defense lawyers may repeatedly file petitions for evidence submission orders following the disclosure of evidence lists,” said Go Naruse, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, who was invited by the ruling bloc of the Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party. Such repetition “may delay court proceedings and impede quick relief from wrongful convictions,” he said. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]