POINT OF VIEW/ Kazuhiro Nakamura: Case should be closed on open interrogations

Recently, there have been many cases in which police and prosecutor interrogations of criminal suspects have been seen as potentially leading to false accusations.

Two examples include: a man suspected of rape and attempted rape in Himi, Toyama Prefecture, in 2002, who was eventually acquitted in a retrial; and the exoneration of defendants accused of vote buying in the 2003 Kagoshima prefectural assembly election.

I was a prosecutor for 10 years before I became a lawyer. In Japan, interrogation of criminal suspects is conducted behind closed doors. But based on my personal experience handling criminal cases as a prosecutor, I firmly believe videotaping and recording the entire interrogation process are required to modernize investigations.

This could prevent investigators from resorting to illegal techniques such as physically abusing suspects, or threatening them, to secure confessions.

Already, the Public Prosecutors Office has partially introduced the recording and videotaping of interrogations, but the practice is limited to certain parts of the procedure as a means of record keeping after most of the investigation has already been completed.

The National Police Agency will also introduce similar measures on a trial basis.

Generally speaking, however, illegal interrogation is conducted in the initial phase of an investigation, leading up to the time suspects make their first confessions. Therefore, such videotaping would be meaningless if the most crucial part remained undocumented.

People do not easily make confessions when interrogators flash their authority around or intimidate them by shouting and raising their voice. Even when they do, such confessions are unreliable and tend to be false.

When I was a prosecutor, I visited a suspect in a collusion case at a detention center on a daily basis to question him. We talked about our personal backgrounds, families, hobbies and our outlooks on life. When I found him to be wrong, I seriously reprimanded him. As a result of such talks, the suspect eventually opened up. He appeared very relieved after confessing everything. As I was preparing to leave, he told me: "Please come and visit me again tomorrow."

To this day, I can vividly recall his words and expression after having taken a load off his mind. Interrogation can be truly effective only when interrogators and suspects communicate with each other as humans made of flesh and blood.

Many investigators try to foster trust with suspects by telling them that what they say is "just between you and me." They might argue that recording and videotaping everything and making the interrogation process open for all to see contradict this just-between-you-and-me talk, and say they would not be able to secure confessions from suspects as easily as before.

The National Policy Agency and the Public Prosecutors Office say that recording and videotaping interrogations would make it difficult to establish criminal charges, thereby undermining public order. But I disagree.

Many countries, including the United States, European and some Asian nations, are opening up the interrogation process. But I have not heard a single report suggesting that it has led to a deterioration of public safety.

On the contrary, there are reports that the practice has been welcomed by investigative authorities, because there are fewer cases of lawsuits over the legality of interrogations.

In recent years, heinous crimes and incidents in which motives are unclear are increasingly attracting public attention. Judging from this trend, I expect questionable interrogation techniques used by detectives and prosecutors, who are regarded as "craftsmen" in extracting confessions from suspects, to die out.

If videotaping is properly implemented, police and prosecutors will be expected to exercise ingenuity to come up with new ideas to effectively interrogate suspects. As a result, interrogation techniques will drastically shift to a process of "reasonable and scientific questioning," and it will be easier for interrogators--who are not necessarily masters of interrogation--to obtain confessions, as long as they are properly trained.

Preventing false accusations is not the only advantage of recording and videotaping interrogations. I am confident that modernizing and rationalizing investigations will also play a positive role in crime prevention, and eventually lead to a safer society.

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The author is a lawyer.(IHT/Asahi: July 19,2008)