Japan Govt Unwilling to Have Evidence Lists Disclosed

Tokyo, May 27 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Justice Ministry showed reluctance Wednesday over the disclosure of lists of evidence deemed necessary for courts to decide whether to reopen convicted cases.

In the just-started discussions on bills to revise the criminal procedure law at the House of Representatives Judicial Affairs Committee, Tomomi Inada, former policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and Chinami Nishimura, deputy head of the leading opposition Centrist Reform Alliance, demanded that prosecutors disclose the evidence lists.

A government-introduced bill stipulates that courts order prosecutors to submit evidence if they conclude that ordering the submission is appropriate after examining the evidence's relevance to retrial petitions and necessity.

Inada stressed that prosecutors should fulfill their responsibility of presenting wide-ranging evidence while Nishimura proposed that courts order evidence submission unless they find the action inappropriate.

Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi tried to ease concerns that the bill is seeking to narrow the scope of evidence disclosure, saying that court-acknowledged relevant evidence would have a substantially wide extent.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]