6-month sentence for leafleting a building

[Taro Toporific]

Damn, these folks got 6 months for leafleting a condo just like my condo is leafleted everyday with 'pink chirashi' porn.

6-month terms sought for 'prisoners of conscience' in Japan
Thursday November 4, 9:27 PM / Kyodo---Prosecutors on Thursday demanded six months in prison for three activists recognized by Amnesty International as "prisoners of conscience," saying they trespassed in residential quarters to distribute leaflets opposing the deployment of Japanese troops in Iraq.
At the Hachioji branch of the Tokyo District Court, the lawyer for the three -- two men and a woman -- said they are not guilty, declaring that "It is a violation of the freedom of expression to prosecute them just because they made a political statement."
The prosecution said, "It is clearly illegal to enter other people's property without permission from the management."
But the defense argued distributing leaflets in mailboxes is common in Japan.

[Captain Japan]

[Guile]

Hmm. "No War"? Well at least that hippie is taking a bath.

[AssKissinger]

Tokyo police arrested the three Feb. 27 on suspicion of entering the Defense Agency's Tachikawa residential quarters on Jan. 17 to put fliers in mailboxes. The leaflets opposed the sending of the Self-Defense Forces to Iraq and asked the troops and their families to consider if the dispatch was necessary.

I want to know if they had to sneak past security or break in or if it's just open.

[Mulboyne]

As the article notes, the three defendants in Taro's original post were also found not guilty at the High Court level but the decicion was overturned in the District Court and is now heading for the Supreme Court.

Mainichi: Monk who distributed political pamphlets found not guilty of trespassing

A man charged with trespassing in a Tokyo apartment block after he distributed leaflets for the Japanese Communist Party there was declared not guilty in a ruling at the Tokyo District Court on Monday. Cleared of the misdemeanor was 58-year-old Buddhist monk Yosei Arakawa. "There is currently no socially-accepted notion of making entry into common space in apartment buildings subject to criminal punishment if the person's purpose is to distribute pamphlets," Presiding Judge Takaaki Oshima said in handing down the ruling. In the case, lawyers for Arakawa had argued that distributing pamphlets was a form of freedom of political expression, which is protected under the constitution.

"There was no automatically lockable door at the entrance, and simply inserting leaflets in door mail slots does not constitute trespassing," a lawyer representing Arakawa said. Prosecutors had counter-argued that there was a sign forbidding entry into the building, and it was clear that the defendant had trespassed. They added that violating other people's rights could not be accepted even if that was to express political opinions. The court said that in deciding whether entry into common space in apartment buildings was permissible, "there is no option but to decide, from the viewpoint of total law and order, whether or not the actions can de deemed socially acceptable, viewed in light of their purpose and method." The court added that it was unlikely that residents would feel any great threat of their peace being violated by receiving pamphlets making political claims, that the fliers were distributed over the space of seven or eight minutes and the violation of privacy was minimal, and that there was little precedent for the case.

Arakawa was charged after he entered a seven-story apartment block in Tokyo's Katsushika-ku at about 2:20 p.m. on Dec. 23, 2004, to distribute Japanese Communist Party reports. He inserted the leaflets into 27 doors on the third to seventh floors of the apartment block, according to the ruling. The monk was detained by police for 23 days after a resident warned him and apprehended him on the spot. In a separate December 2004 ruling on the distribution of fliers, the Tokyo District Court's Hachioji branch handed down a not guilty verdict to three people charged with distributing pamphlets opposing the deployment of Self-Defense Forces to Iraq at the official residence for Defense Agency officials in Tachikawa, Tokyo. In December last year, however, the Tokyo High Court overturned the ruling and ordered the three to pay fines of between 100,000 and 200,000 yen. The defendants have filed a Supreme Court appeal.