Making video recordings of interrogations in criminal cases has been introduced as a measure to prevent police and prosecution investigators from forcing or leading suspects into making false confessions, which has been blamed for many cases in which suspects were charged with or convicted of crimes they did not commit. However, a recent Tokyo High Court ruling on a 2005 murder case highlighted the risk involved in showing such recordings in courtrooms — by warning against the possibility that the impression left by the video could influence the judges' decision on the culpability of the accused.
In the December 2005 murder of a 7-year-old girl in Imaichi (now part of the city of Nikko) in Tochigi Prefecture, prosecutors lacked material evidence that directly tied the accused, Takuya Katsumata, 36, to the crime. Seven years after the murder, Katsumata, who had been under arrest on a separate case, confessed to killing the girl during police interrogation but later reversed himself and pleaded not guilty in court. His lawyers said he had been led by interrogators to make a false confession.
During the lay judge trial at the Utsunomiya District Court, a key issue was the credibility of Katsumata's confession. Prosecutors showed the court more than seven hours of video recordings of his interrogation. In 2016, the district court sentenced him to life, ruling that while circumstantial evidence alone was not sufficient to convict him of the murder, his confession was trustworthy enough given his attitude during the interrogation — as shown in the video. Katsumata appealed the ruling.