A university professor is heading the Japanese version of a U.S.-led movement to exonerate people who have been wrongfully charged and imprisoned using DNA testing.
Mitsuyuki Inaba, 51, who is neither a lawyer nor an expert in criminal law, is a professor at Ritsumeikan University's College of Policy Science. He believes Japan's criminal justice system is rife with fundamental failures that lead to wrongful imprisonment due to the "unscientific" way in which investigations are carried out.
Inaba, who specializes in cognitive science, took up the post of director at the Innocence Project Japan, which was launched in April in cooperation with lawyers and other legal experts.