On the twenty second of January 1999, the Japanese criminal authorities
revealed their revulsion of decency and human rights at the Osaka High
Court. District prosecutors presented arguments against one Etsuko Yamada
( a former day care worker, aged 47) for murder, a crime which she has
been tried and found innocent twice over the last twenty four years. A
summary of the case:
Between March 17 and 19, 1974, one boy and one girl, both aged twelve,
were found missing from their residence at the Kabutoyama Gakuen, a school
for the mentally disabled in Nishinomiya, Hyogo prefecture. A massive search
of the area by police and community lead to the discovery of the bodies
in the school's septic tank. The cause of death was listed as drowning.
The police immediately suspected murder and began to interview and interrogate
each and every member of the institution's staff, thirty three in all.
Few imagined that their children could perpetrate such a tragedy. Yet,
the police vacuum of the septic tank uncovered many toys and pieces of
clothing. The heavy seventeen kilogram (thirty-five pound) lid covering
the tank had to have been moved several times to hold the quantity of items
removed in the search. External and internal pressure upon the authorities
to arrest a suspect became intense. On April, 7, twenty eight days after
the incident, prefectural police arrested twenty two year old Etsuko Yamada
(nee Sawasaki), a teacher of the school on charges of murder.
What evidence or testimony supported the arrest? Yamada was one of three
on duty the night that the second child is assumed to have disappeared.
Her family background was slightly odd. She was raised by her father after
a divorce. Born in the mountain prefecture of Toyama, she grew up in the
city of Matsuyama on the island of Shikoku. Though no small city-the population
at the time was about 400,000- residents of Tokyo or Osaka would consider
it a provincial town. Not the model of obedience and obsequiousness one
would expect of a young Japanese woman, she was outspoken and direct in
speech and communication. Yet, she had a sensitive personality and wept
wildly at the children's funerals.
Such was the scope of evidence at the time. The absence of credible
materials implicating Yamada was not seen as a problem, she could be held
in custody in a substitute prison (daiyou kangoku) for twenty three days
without being formally charged. During this period, interrogation could
be administered from morning until midnight with very limited access to
counsel; good tactics for extracting a confession. With a confession in
hand, the public would be satisfied, the pressure would be off the police.
This plan proceeded as expected. After vehemently protesting her innocence,
Yamada broke under interrogation and signed a confession. Strongly insisting
she had no recollection of harming the children, the confession stated:
"I believe I committed the crimes while unconscious." Several
days later, after repeated reminders that unrepentant murderers go to the
gallows, the detectives succeeded in extracting a full blown confession
to the charge of murder.
Whether their endeavors lead to prosecution and conviction was only of
casual importance to the police. The hideous nature of this incident-retarded
children being drowned in a fetid doom-, galvanized the public's attention.
The real trial would be conducted in the media. Always thirsty for a new
scoop, the newspapers and television networks were all too eager to fan
the flames. Yamada's arrest and subsequent confessions made prime time
television and front page news. The Japanese media saw no reason to doubt
their police, quite to the contrary, they themselves dissected the suspect
with all manner of expert opinions attempting to distill what drove this
young woman to insanity and murder.
With confessions in hand the next step, according to common judicial procedure,
would be a formal indictment with the prosecution. A trial would begin
and the prosecution would make a case before three judges (Japan has no
jury system). But without verifiable evidence or credible testimony what
could be done? With the public desire for a scapegoat satiated, and Yamada's
name already permanently destroyed, the police released their suspect with
the casual rejoinder, "pending further investigation."
This story may well have ended here. The police expected their confessor
to disappear from public view, perhaps to some obscure mountain village.
The public would gradually forget the case, investigators who saw it to
completion would be congratulated and rewarded. The criminal authorities
would bask in the sun, their prestige reaffirmed in the the public's eye.
Many well thought plans veer from their scripted courses; this one shockingly
so. Rather than fleeing to some distant province, Yamada, aided by a barrage
of willful, pro bono lawyers, filed charges against the prefectural police
and the state demanding apologies and punitive damages under the State
Redress Law. As the chances of winning any kind of judgment from such a
suit in Japan are almost nil, it was primarily a symbolic action. In a
short instance, the self aggrandizement in which the police were basking
suddenly darkened.
The value of face in authoritarian societies is inestimable, Yamada and
her attorneys were preparing to drag it through the mud. Whether punitive
damages would be won or not was beside the question, the police would be
given a lesson on decency and the necessity of abiding by fair and due
process, the media could be shown the sham upon which they so willingly
feasted.
As the suit against the state gradually proceeded, the powers that be went
on the attack. A reinvestigation was opened, previous wards of the now
defunct school, all mentally impaired to some degree, were questioned closely
and carefully by the police. In order to show their intolerance of effrontery
, the police ransacked the office of her support association, searched
the homes of its members and seized over one thousand pieces of "evidence".
Yamada was rearrested in March of 1978 along with two colleagues who supported
her alibi. The brunt of the evidence: testimony of the mentally disabled
young adults of the institution, commencing three
years and several months after the incident occurred.
This was the essence of the prosecution's case in what may be this century's
longest running criminal trial. The first trial ran from 1978 until 1985
concluding with a decision of "not guilty." The prosecution appealed,
despite the presence of article 39 of the Japanese constitution proclaiming
"those accused shall not be put in double jeopardy of life and limb."
As in any autocratic society, what the prosecution requests, it usually
gets. The Osaka High Court refused to try the case but remanded it to the
district court for a retrial. Without directly saying so, the high court
tacitly concurred that Yamada was guilty. The second trial began in Feb
1993. Five years and one month later, on March 26,1998, the Kobe District
Court again declared the defendant "innocent."
In a society where face outweighs fairness, common sense and human rights
mean little. On April 13 ,1998, the Kobe prosecutor's office filed an appeal
with the Osaka High Court for a retrial. The court accepted the appeal,
and the first hearing proceeded as scheduled on January twenty second.