253: Phoenix Wright's Objection!

[Goremocker]

Well...that's just great, now i want Phoenix Wright, And I don't even have a DS.

None the less it was an Interesting read and I don't think I will be underestimating the metaphorical power of a Japanese game again any time soon. I still can't believe that a country could have such an unbalanced legal system. Good thing I live in the US where, even if they get the wright guy, you can still get off with a slap on the wrist.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Whilst I would like to say that Japan's legal system is messed up and other righteous "the world should know better" stuff, I won't.

The world isn't perfect, but people are trying to fix the problems, I just hope they fix them before a lot more people get hurt.

 

[DojiStar]

This is why I was so shocked while watching Death Note. I was thinking, "Wait, do Japanese people still really believe that anyone charged with a crime is guilty? It's usually just some poor convenient schmoe who was beaten into a confession."

Confessions aren't even useful for capturing real criminals. The Yakuza know that the police are crap at getting real evidence and conducting a rigorous investigation and rely almsot entirely on confessions. As long as they can suck it in for a couple of weeks (I think it used - or even still - is the case that the police in Japan can hold you for what, 14 days without seeing a lawyer?), they're likely to walk and not to even be charged.

 

[Toriver]

Once again i learn something about Japan that seems to me to be just wrong.

While i wouldn't count it to be one of the worst countries, i am very convinced that, thanks to the strange influence of tradition, Japan is a weird and mostly, very very scary place to live.


...And thanks to this article i suddenly realized just how badly the police gets portrayed in japanese Manga, Anime and even some movies. Things like Death Note, Dragonball, Ju-On, Ghost in the Shell and others came to mind.

Japan is not a scary place to live in at all. Just don't do anything obviously stupid, and you'll be fine. Trust me, I live there now, and the police have simply been more of an annoyance than anything, and they've only ever talked to me twice. They like to check to see if foreigners are carrying their ID, and that's all they've ever bothered me about, and they've only done that twice to me.

Jury trials are still not going to be very common. Only the most serious of criminal cases will have them, essentially Phoenix Wright-caliber cases, unlike all criminal cases in most Western nations.

Wait a minute, before we start misleading people with the statistics. The high percentage could simply refer to the fact that police do not trial individuals unless they are sure they have compiled enough evidence to guarantee a conviction. Whilst other countries do not have a percentage as high, the police in most countries will try to avoid expensive trials as much as possible. If at the end of a trial, someone is found innocent, it means the police investigation and criminal process has been a waste of money (they were chasing the wrong guys and they could have spent that money persuing real criminals).

True, which is why that statistic is only a part of the issue. The main issue is that it's too easy to skew the case in favor of the prosecutor. In other jurisdictions, the stated principle to err in favor of the defendant dissuades prosecutors from proceeding with flimsy evidence.

I read this very insightful essay on the subject called "Why is the Japanese Rate of Conviction So High?[/i].
http://129.3.20.41/eps/le/papers/9907/9907001.pdf

It concludes:
* Japanese prosecutors have limited resources and only pick the cases that are assured success
* Judges look down on prosecutors who have not prepared their cases well
* The overall incarceration level in Japan is low.

The article suggests that Japan's issues with crime (like the prosecutors refusal to take cases wherein the defendant's guilt is dubious) mostly stems from a lack of budget and staff. It does not suggest that the Japanese system is corrupted or biased to the point where a trial verdicts cannot be trusted (quite the opposite in fact).

There is no denying that pushing for a jury system may improve the system however. This should take a little weight off both the understaffed prosecutors and the hard pressed lawyers for the defence.

The part about prosecutors not pursuing cases unless a conviction is almost guaranteed is indeed true... and a part of why they use so many tactics that the West would consider shaky. Though the 99% conviction rate still comes across to me as a system favoring the prosecution over the defense. No prosecutor is perfect, not even Edgeworth or von Karma. One piece of pressure put on prosecutors in Japan that is not mentioned above is another staple of the Phoenix Wright games: the 2-day investigation. While this was speeded up in the game to a 2-day trial, in reality, police have to offer their case to a prosecutor within 2 days of the start of investigation, and then the prosecutor must decide whether to proceed within another 10 days while the suspect is held. So a prosecutor has 12 days to decide whether to press forward with a trial that may take months or even years to be resolved and could make or break his/her career. No pressure there, eh? One can understand, then, how in those situations guaranteed convictions have a bigger importance to a prosecutor than in the West. That kind of pressure could drive them to be less scrupulous than your average Western prosecutor, too.

 

[boholikeu]

As someone who lives in Japan I can definitely agree that the general idea here is people caught by the police are "guilty until proven innocent". Recent events (IE people being found innocent years later due to DNA evidence) are changing that a bit, but you still wouldn't want to be falsely accused of a crime here in Japan.

It does not suggest that the Japanese system is corrupted or biased to the point where a trial verdicts cannot be trusted (quite the opposite in fact).

Well, if confessions are still regarded as "golden evidence" (IE enough to bring a case to court) then I'd argue that the verdicts can't really be trusted.

There is no denying that pushing for a jury system may improve the system however. This should take a little weight off both the understaffed prosecutors and the hard pressed lawyers for the defence.

Sadly I don't think a jury system will help too much unless people are taught that A) the defendant is innocent until proven guilty, and B) it's okay to disagree with other people in the jury. The government is doing a lot to help educate people about the new system though, so hopefully it will result in a lower conviction rate. I wonder if there are any new conviction statistics out yet now that the jury system has been in place for almost a year.

 

[geldonyetich]

Very interesting article. I didn't realize Phoenix Wright was so heavily laden with subtle judicial commentary.

 

[standokan]

I love phoenix wright although ace atourny is old news, in fact phoenix wright himself is old news, he now is a supporting character, a dad who plays piano in a russian bar as a job, yes the piano thing is old news too but i like to live in the past and look at now as the future.

 

[maninahat]

Well, if confessions are still regarded as "golden evidence" (IE enough to bring a case to court) then I'd argue that the verdicts can't really be trusted.

Whilst nearly every trial relies on a confession in Japan, the country has a categorical rule that they cannot convict a man on confession alone (as is the case around the World). The status quo in Japanese law, as I understand it, is that a trail serves not to establish whether someone is innocent, but to establish how they are gong to be sentenced. If there is a likelyhood that the person is innocent, they don't bother with the trial in the first place.

The confession serves more like a plea bargain. One which would be advisable to take if you hear you are going to court. The trial is a forgon conclusion anyway, so you might as well save them some time and money. It's covered in that there article I posted.

 

[Swifteye]

Wow. This article totally makes the game more interesting. I mean I thought it was a silly court game but real world parallells give it so much more depth.

 

[Zenron]

A very informative article, thanks Fintan. I wasn't aware of how crude the Japanese legal system was. I haven't played this game, but it seems kind of different from what we usually see, and it's an interesting concept. However, I feel like I'm not seeing the whole side of this story, and through reading the comments, I see this is true. Still a good article though.

 

[Worgen]

suddenly Phoenix Wright makes so much more sense to me

 

[Therumancer]

Interesting, though not terribly surprising. I have never played "Ace Attorney" but this does make some other things I had been wondering about (from books, Anime, etc...) a bit more clear.

That said, there is never going to be such a thing as a "perfect" legal system. Heck, even if we did create a system that was perfect through some kind of psychic precognition or whatever, that in of itself would freak people out. While the point of movies like "Minority Report" was that the system had flawed, even if it worked perfectly it would still scare the bejeezus out of people if something like that could ever be implemented... not to mention other science fiction tropes like "thought police", "psychic detectives", and "brain scans".

Going back to the old days when Dinosaurs walked the earth, and I took Criminal Justice, I basically agree with the maxim that there are basically two types of functional legal systems. There is the kind of system that would rather see a guilty person go free than an innocent go to jail, and the kind of system that would rather see an innocent go to jail than a guilty person go free. There are arguements in favor of both attitudes actually.

Even in the US which is a system where we'd rather see the guilty go free than punish an innocent, we can't even come to an accepted consensus on what is fair. Ask a simple question like "should the law apply equally to everyone?" and people will say "yes" but then inevitably (as I've had demonstrated in class) pretty much everyone will come up with exceptions based on a "free hand" needed for certain jobs, or how rapists and child molesters should be continuously singled out and "punished" through omission even after their sentence, and whatever else.

I think the biggest problem with Japan's system as I was reading it probably isn't the lack of a Jury, but apparently that these Prosecutors don't seem to be in any way accountable to the people themselves. A DA/Prosecutor/State Attorney General gets too 'iffy' or out of control and they can wind up out of a job very quickly. That seems to work fairly well, though admittedly like everything it has a down side: and in the US it's that the pressure to hold office/keep getting re-elected leads to them doing what is popular as opposed to right. To some extent allowing for "mob justice" based on the whims of the people. I look towards the Rodney King thing as an example, whatever you believe about what happened the bottom line is that the officers in question were found innocent, due to a riot they were for all intents and purposes re-tried and found guilty... something that isn't supposed to happen. For that reason alone I consider that one of the greatest failures of the US justice system. While I think we get it right for the most part, I suppose Japan's system makes things like this less likely.

 

[GL2814E]

I did not know anything about the Japanese legal system. Very interesting.

Good Article.

 

[Noxshadow]

Good article, but there's one minor nitpick I have.
Pheonix doesn't use any magic or spiritual stuff at all. It's all Maya and Pearl.
I can defiantly see how some prosecutors are held in higher regard than Judges. I'm playing the first game (Ace Attorney) and the prosecutor is Baron von Karma, the man who, in his fifty year career has not only never lost a case, but never received a fine or penalty. He outright bosses the judge around; "You have one job in this court, and that is to bang you gavel and say 'Guilty'."

 

[Noxshadow]

(Ignore)

 

[D-Ship]

Nice article! As another Japan 3+ year resident, I've always thought the legal system was pretty screwed up. Like others have said here no system is perfect, but a lot can be said for a system being less imperfect when lives end up getting ruined in the process.

 

[adderseal]

Brilliant article. Excellent read, I had no idea that the court system in Phoenix Wright was a parody, and not just a crazy made-up legal system with so many holes in it you could fly a fleet of 747s through.
Escapist! Sign this guy up!

 

[Mr. Fister]

This was quite the eye-opener. After reading this article, I played through a bit of Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth (Decent game, btw), and I could actually point out the parody elements in one of the cases.

Spoiler: May contain spoilers to the game

Specifically, in Case 3 when you run into Interpol Agent Lang. He's essentially the negative aspects of the prosecutor in detective form, as all he cares about is arresting someone, no matter who that someone is. At one point, he even says that he has little faith in the court-system to begin with. Aside from being Edgeworth's foil, it's easy to see that he's meant to represent an investigator at his worst (short of actually being the criminal, which I'm not sure if he'll turn out to be one or not).

A very solid read, to be sure.

 

[Allan Foe]

Am I the only one who thinks that the idea of an employee of a human rights organization in Japan writing articles for a gamer subculture magazine is INCREDIBLY AWESOME? Good job, Mr. Monaghan!

And it's nice to see such a fruitful discussion arise from such an interesting article. Special thanks go to the Japanese residents on this forum -- your insights will help us form a better picture of the whole issue.

 

[Dapper Ninja]

I was playing Trials and Tribulations just before I read this and I just learned that Ace Attorney is way deeper than I thought.