False charges leveled in a 2002 rape and attempted rape in Toyama Prefecture and the acquittal of all defendants of vote-buying allegations in the 2003 Kagoshima Prefectural Assembly election were widely reported in 2007 and caused controversy.
The National Police Agency has made public the result of its examination of the investigations in these cases and issued guidelines for interrogating suspects as part of its effort to prevent unfounded accusations. The report and guidelines warn against police investigators' habit of relying too much on confessions to build criminal cases against suspects. It is hoped that police will go back to the basic principle of finding corroborative evidence once they get confessions.
In the Toyama cases, a taxi driver went through a nearly two-year prison ordeal. After he was released on parole in January 2005, a man arrested in Tottori Prefecture in August 2006 as a suspect in a sex crime later confessed to the Toyama rape and attempted rape. In the Kagoshima case, a prefectural assembly member and 12 other people were charged with violation of the Public Offices Election Law. But in February 2007, the Kagoshima District Court acquitted them all and public prosecutors gave up appealing the ruling. A recent statement from Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama, however, shows that he has learned little from these cases. He said that the Kagoshima case was not one of false charges.