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Comment by chollida1 | Hacker News Reader

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Jap....

Not really what most people would expect when you say 100%

> According to them, Japanese prosecutors will prosecute only the very few cases in which they are most likely to be guilty and not many others.[2][3][4] According to Ryo Ogiso, a professor at Chuo University, prosecutors suspend prosecution for 60% of cases they receive, and end prosecution for the remaining 30% through a simplified judicial process. Only about 8% of cases are actually prosecuted, and this low prosecution rate is the reason for Japan's high conviction rate.[3][5]

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Quoting from Wikipedia [1]:

The conviction rate is 99.3%. By only stating this high conviction rate it is often misunderstood as too high—however, this high conviction rate drops significantly when accounting for the fact that Japanese prosecutors drop roughly half the cases they are given. If measured in the same way, the United States' conviction rate would be 99.8%.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate#Japan

Wow. I have now scrubbed this wrong fact from my brain. Thanks!

One thing to note is they can detain you for up to 23 days without a charge (subject to extension) and during that time you may of may not be able to speak to a lawyer and during this time sometimes they get detainees to “confess”.

Mr Ghosn got some concessions only because he had some influence.

In the US it’s a bit different, prosecutors throw as many counts as they can in hopes the accused will plea-deal for a lesser charge.

Not sure what’s worse.

Speaking as a complete non-expert, I don't find that a satisfactory/comforting answer.

Just a quick google search shows prosecutors in the US also selectively choose which cases to prosecute (it appears there are around 4x as many cases get dismissed than go all the way to a jury trial), but nonetheless there are many meritless cases that do somehow make it to trial anyways.

I could accept that Japanese prosecutors are a bit better at filtering, but a 99.3% conviction rate does not seem right.

Why not? You'd prefer the prosecutors to waste their time trying to prosecute cases where they're most likely to lose? Instead, they either drop those cases, or try to arrange some other settlement before getting to trial.

There's many things seriously wrong with the Japanese judicial system, but this isn't one of them.

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