That said, not being him, I really don't like the narrative built around how Japanese prisons are horrible and it's justified to not serve for crimes in Japan. I also wonder if the "Japanese prisons and legal system are not good" editorials were coordinated.
IMHO, if Japanese system is that bad, People should stop going to Japan or take action to fix it for everyone instead of normalising the getting of scott-free for the elite.
Uh, yes it is. Maybe if you’re imprisoned illegally (kidnapping or by kangaroo court) but in the general case—in a democracy with actual courts, it’s wrong.
You think the cartel bosses that escaped from Mexico’s prisons were not morally and ethically wrong on multiple levels? Just because there’s also some corruption in the gov? Or because the prisons aren’t great. That’s unreasonable
To quote Wikipedia "In some other places like Germany and a number of other countries, it is considered human nature to want to escape from a prison and it is considered as a violation of the right of freedom, so escape is not penalized in itself (in the absence of other factors such as threats of violence, actual violence, or property damage)."
Either way, the person I was responding to did not say it was a natural desire, they only said it was “not wrong”.
Michael Taylor. Mr. Taylor pleaded guilty to aiding Mr. Ghosn’s escape and started a two-year sentence at Tokyo’s Fuchu Prison in the summer of 2021; he spends much of his day in solitary confinement.
That should not be confused with the crimes being wrong, I'm talking about ones desire not to be imprisoned being a natural desire and acting on it not being wrong by itself.
So I can't say I wouldn't have done the same as Ghosn, given the necessary resources. Right or wrong wouldn't be a consideration, as long as I could rationalize an assumption of bad faith on the courts' part.
Edit: I guess it could also suggest that the police in Japan are hopeless fuckups who only manage to catch the most flagrantly-incompetent criminals. That doesn't sound any more realistic than the other possibilities IMO.
They alternative, where prosecutors lose so many cases that their win rate goes down into the 70's or 60's, implies that prosecutors are taking lots of flyers just see how the cases shake out. That would be a tremendous abuse.
A great movie on the Japanese judicial system is I just didn't do it (Soredemo boku wa yattenai) [2] It's a phenomenal movie but really shows that Japan has a real issues.
Given that if I were Ghosn, I'd have escaped too, there was no way for him to get a fair trial in Japan.
[1] https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c05401/order-in-the-c... [2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0794350/
The staff of prosecutors is much smaller in Japan, so it likely means they mostly prosecute the winnable cases. In contrast in the US, a district attorney might choose to prosecute cases which make themself more electable.
So you completely missed the case that Japan’s conviction rate is high because they may only prosecute people when there is actual evidence.
The judge figures that you must be guilty, or they wouldn't be charging you.
There's an old baseball story, where Rogers Hornsby (one of the greatest hitters of all time) is up, a pitch comes in, and the ump calls it a ball. The catcher turns around to complain.
The ump says "Young man, if that was a strike, Mr. Hornsby would have swung at it."
But - FWIW - prosecutors in the US tend to have win rates north of 90% as well. 98% is excessively high, yes, but we're talking single digit percentages compared to a country with comparatively more crime.
A lot of the accusations are for standard rich people crimes which is some amount of tax avoidance. You can basically pick and choose who you want to target because as panama papers shows pretty much all rich people are dodging taxes to some degree.
Still doesn't change the fact that Interpol has a red notice for Ghosn.
Conveniently, he cannot stand trial in France, which has also called for his arrest based on their own investigations, because he chose to become an international fugitive in Lebanon [1].
That said, I believe there has been prosecutorial interest around Anthony Ghosn--Carlos's son living in, to my last recollection, California--due to payments he made to the Taylors [2]. (The daughter, Maya, who is profiled in the article helping him escape is also in California, though there is no interest in charging her to my knowledge.)
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/france-issues-international-arr...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nissan-ghosn-taylor-bail-...
(Without getting into value judgments about the merits of the case,) this quote from Leo McGarry comes to mind:
> Well, that's why he did it. You can't fault him for having a winning strategy.
http://www.westwingtranscripts.com/search.php?flag=getTransc...
I know the tech scene tends to fawn over Japanese culture, but business and government there lean conservative like every other nation state right now. My experience is that it’s 100% possible some xenophobes within industry have a very “Brexit-like” mentality about their nation and the fear of Renault-Nissan culture clash was leveraged to trump up charges.
Note I said it’s possible. Ultimately none of us really know, but the Japanese are “just people” too. No reason to believe they’re aren’t pulling an “Assange” like the west.