Legal Experts Fight For Chika Honda

[Mulboyne]

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From "CHIKA: A Documentary Performance"

The Age: Japanese heroin smuggler 'was not guilty'
A JAPANESE woman who spent more than 10 years in a Victorian jail for heroin smuggling was almost certainly innocent, fresh evidence suggests. A team of Australian and Japanese legal experts have uncovered new evidence, including witness statements confirming her alibi, and say her trial was fundamentally flawed. But Chika Honda's hopes that the findings could lead to a pardon have been dashed, following a dispute between the Australian academics and Japanese lawyers who have been working on the case. Ms Honda, now 52, has maintained her innocence since she was arrested at Melbourne Airport in June 1992...more...

More articles about Honda from the same newspaper here and here. There's also an extensive Wikipedia entry on this case which has some details of the defence arguments that cultural misunderstanding played a part at the trial.

[Marvin Feltcher]

Not really topic-related but, that (bizarre) video was made by Mayu Kanamori, wife of Ben Hills, author of the controversial "Princess Masako."

[Samurai_Jerk]

That interpreter at the beginning of the video sounds like one an FG typically gets at a police station in Japan. I don't know the details of the case, so I'm not going to pass judgement on her being found guilty, but it really amazes me that modern liberal democracies still allow this kind of Mickey Mouse bullshit to go on in their police stations and courts.

[amdg]

Japanese lawyers - please fuck off back to your own country and take your filthy drugs with you too.

Poor translation? Well, you only know that thanks to the recording of the interrogation which the police in your country don't even do. So they get away with poor translations all the time.

Ms. Honda - you didn't understand our legal system? Tough shit. It's not necessary for you to understand it. All you have to do is tell the truth, something that you didn't seem to be able to do very well. You were trying to protect your "friend", the guy who turned you into a drug mule and the guy who is responsible for you being in jail. You tried to protect him because that's what members of team Japan do, even though he thoroughly shopped your ass in a big bad way.

I followed this case all the way, and I personally know His Honour S. Charles very well. He is a genius and if he made a mistake in the law I'll eat my cock.

Edit - It's ridiculous the slant that this story has been given in the J-press. Titled the "Melbourne incident" or something like that, and the message given is "Be careful when traveling to Melbourne! It's very dangerous!"

No. It's dangerous if you happen to be carrying multiple kilograms of heroin. Bitches.

[Mulboyne]

It looks like Chika Honda probably was a dupe but I tend to agree with amdg that to place all the blame on the Australian justice system doesn't seem fair either. That interpreter sounds horrific but a lot of the blame must be laid at the door of her defence lawyers and the decisions she agreed to. It's naive to think that you'll automatically get justice by telling the truth: that's not how it works in Japan even for Japanese defendants and if she was under an illusion that she didn't need to fight her side then her lawyer ought to have put her straight and evidently didn't. Her supporters do seem to have a case when they question whether she was allowed a proper defence but it is interesting that they seem to have split even now over a similar issue:

After researching Honda's case for four years, Australian academics professors Paul Wilson and Eric Colvin are convinced she is innocent. Their voluntary work was carried out in support of Japanese lawyers engaged in what is known in Japan as "the Melbourne case"...Wilson, a forensic psychologist, is chair of the department of criminology at Bond University in Queensland, where Colvin is a professor of law...Colvin helped draft the petition, drawing on evidence gathered by the Japanese lawyers. "The proposal to be put to the Governor-General was that there was fresh evidence that exculpated Chika Honda and also that the way that the trail proceeded meant that she did not receive a fair trial," he said. The petition "raised issues about the nature of the representation that the defendants received". The petition was about to be presented to the Governor-General when the two academics withdrew from the case over what they say was a "professional disagreement" between them and the Japanese legal team.

Colvin said ethical issues relating to "our confidential relationship with the Japanese lawyers" meant neither academic could elaborate on the nature of the disagreement. Kei Nakanishi is one of the large group of Japanese lawyers working on the case. He said the disagreement stemmed from the fact that, while the Australian experts were focused solely on Honda, the "Melbourne case" involved four other Japanese nationals. (The three convicted of having the heroin in their suitcases, and Yoshio Katsuno, the alleged ringleader.) "There is a sensitive problem in this case," Nakanishi told The Sunday Age. Asked if there was a conflict between the interests of Honda and another member of the group, he said: "You can probably assume a conflict of interest". If the petition for a pardon on behalf of Honda went ahead, "it might be harmful to another person", Nakanishi said. This seems to mean that clearing Honda would confirm the guilt of one of the other four. As far as the petition is concerned, he said, "nothing more can be done". Wilson said the collapse of the petition "highlights a cultural difference between us and the Japanese lawyers".

[Samurai_Jerk]

Japanese lawyers - please fuck off back to your own country and take your filthy drugs with you too.

Poor translation? Well, you only know that thanks to the recording of the interrogation which the police in your country don't even do. So they get away with poor translations all the time.

Red herring. Japan's shitty track record has nothing to do with this case and in no way excuses injustice in Australia whether the defendant is Japanese or not.

[amdg]

Japan's shitty track record has nothing to do with this case and in no way excuses injustice in Australia whether the defendant is Japanese or not.

That much I agree with.

But it's not a red herring. It's highly instructive and worth pointing out that these Japanese legal experts are so quick to find fault with the Australian system when it concerns one of team Japan, but don't give a shit about similar abuses (on a far grander scale) in their own country.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Japanese legal experts are so quick to find fault with the Australian system when it concerns one of team Japan, but don't give a shit about similar abuses (on a far grander scale) in their own country.

There are legal experts in Japan that have just as much beef with their own system. The problem is Japan Inc. doesn't give them a voice.

I think most countries seems to have the same problem as Japan. They don't give a shit until it's one of their own and it's happening abroad.

[Mulboyne]

It's highly instructive and worth pointing out that these Japanese legal experts are so quick to find fault with the Australian system when it concerns one of team Japan, but don't give a shit about similar abuses (on a far grander scale) in their own country.

There is nothing on the lawyer's group site which says "You can't get justice in Australia" or "This would never have happened in Japan" so I think it's unfair to see them as somehow embodying the faults of the Japanese sytem.

[amdg]

It might be that, for a variety of reasons, some of which I posted here, some of which I won't post, that I am too 'close ' to this issue and am incapable of being objectively fair in this instance.

However, there are some things I don't like about this case:

- The way it's being played in Japan as poor little innocent J-girl goes to Australia and get's put in prison because of mistakes in the way the case was handled. No one is talking about the fact that her Japanese friend set her up (if that's what in fact happened, as seems to be the case).

- I don't like hearing from Japanese people about the 'poor treatment' she recieved such as inadequate translators, lack of sensitivity to cultural differences etc, when no foreigner get that sort of treatment in Japan. Instead, foreigners in Japan get lied to by the police about what they are signing, get biased translators as the norm, and get their testimony discounted because they are foreign. And no one comes to their rescue (why not? see below).

- It annoys me that 'Japanese legal experts' have access to media and rescources in Australia that foreign lawyers in Japan would never in a million years be granted.

Sour grapes? - yes, I has them.

[Mulboyne]

...The way it's being played in Japan as poor little innocent J-girl goes to Australia and get's put in prison because of mistakes in the way the case was handled. No one is talking about the fact that her Japanese friend set her up (if that's what in fact happened, as seems to be the case).

You can see that more by omission which is often the way such matters get treated in Japan. A quick google really doesn't show that the case has much domestic media attention. Part of the reason is probably that people assume that at least one of the group must have been culpable. Here's one paragraph from a few years ago:

The Melbourne Case continues to attract attention in Japan, yet according to Kazuo Takagi, a senior writer with the national newspaper Asahi Shimbun and its Australian correspondent between 1998 and 2001, he and other Japanese journalists do not share the view that all are victims.

I think the fact that her lawyers have access to the media is a credit to Australia and shows the country to be unafraid of examining its institutions.