The decision Friday by the Tokyo District Court to hand Akihito Matsumura, a former senior health ministry official, a suspended prison term for professional negligence resulting in the death of a patient from AIDS underscores the difficulties in trials involving the criminal liability of bureaucrats.

The main focus of the trial was whether Matsumura, who between 1985 and 1986 was head of the now-defunct Biologics and Antibiotics Division, knew of the potential dangers posed by unheated blood coagulants when they were administered to two patients -- a hemophiliac and a patient suffering from a liver disorder.

He was found guilty of negligence in the case involving the liver disorder patient.

But the case also rekindled a decades-old debate over whether individual bureaucrats, usually top experts in their respective fields, can be held criminally responsible for the consequences of government policy, which in Japan is often formulated through close-knit and opaque collaboration among various ministries and agencies.

In previous major cases examining the side effects of drugs, including the thalidomide scandal of the early 1960s and the outbreak of SMON (subacute myleo-optico-neuropathy) in the 1970s, the criminal liability of health ministry officials was never questioned.

Lawyer Toshihiro Suzuki, who represented HIV-infected plaintiffs in the civil suit, believes that senior government officials such as Matsumura should be held criminally responsible, considering their high level of expertise.

"Bureaucrats usually have extensive knowledge and strong influence over the general public," Suzuki said. "They should be required (by law) to shoulder the utmost responsibility for citizens' well-being," and convicted of professional negligence should they neglect this responsibility.

Experts including scholars and bureaucrats have traditionally not been held strongly accountable for government policies. As a result, this has spawned a series of "crimes perpetrated by those in power," the lawyer alleged, noting that this is exemplified by several high-profile fiascoes involving drugs and medical policy.

"It's time for the country to set specific moral standards for individual experts and to create a (legal) system to try them when they neglect such standards," he said.

Bureaucrats' lack of accountability to the public regarding the decisions they have made can also be seen in the handling of the recent mad cow scare, Suzuki said.

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry has been criticized for failing to swiftly provide the public with proper information on the disease. And instead of imposing a ban on meat-and-bone meal, through which the illness is believed to be transmitted, the ministry for many years simply instructed farmers to not use the feed.

But many legal professionals argue that given the typical bottom-up decision-making process within government bodies, it is almost impossible to point the finger of blame for a scandal at any one individual.

In cases involving medical treatment, it has been extremely difficult for investigative authorities to establish the criminal responsibility of bureaucrats. This is because bureaucrats are granted discretionary power over their fields of expertise.

"In the government's policymaking process, even a director-class bureaucrat is still just one of the many players both within and outside his or her ministry who are involved in the issue," said Eiji Uemura, a professor of administrative law at Seikei University.

"Usually, many people each shoulder just a small portion of the responsibility and as such it is difficult for the nation's criminal justice system to properly function in examining such allegations," he said, adding that trying to place sole responsibility on a certain individual can often amount to nothing more than a witch hunt.

Uemura emphasized the importance of disclosing information in the government's decision-making process if such debacles as the HIV scandal are to be prevented in the future. Such a policy, he said, would increase bureaucrats' sense of responsibility. In the HIV scandal, more than 1,500 hemophiliacs were administered unheated blood products even though officials had been warned of their risks, and about one-third of them subsequently died of AIDS.

"If even the slightest misjudgments by bureaucrats are visible to the public, they will become more cautious when making decisions," he maintained.

However, a foolproof remedy may not be that simple.

Fujio Otani, president of the International University of Health and Welfare, has firsthand experience of dealing with the mind-set of government officials. This mentality, he said, serves as an obstacle to making necessary policy changes.

Otani, formerly a Health and Welfare Ministry official in charge of policies related to Hansen's disease, spent the years after his retirement working to abolish the decades-old Leprosy Prevention Law, which led to unnecessary discrimination against patients.

He admitted, however, that when he was a bureaucrat, altering a long-held government policy was the last thing on his mind.

"Civil servants widely share an extremely conformist nature, which prevents them from even making changes for the better without consensus," he said.

Otani believes the HIV debacle and many other scandals involving the government are the tragic consequences of this mentality.

"Making changes usually makes more trouble for your colleagues as well as industries that have benefited from existing policies," he said. "If you do it several times, you are classified as a troublemaker and your career prospects are no longer bright."