Audio tapes recorded some 17 years ago of Mr. Toshikazu Sugaya being questioned during a murder investigation reveal how investigators can manipulate suspects into making false confessions. The recordings, which were played over two days (Jan. 21-22) of Mr. Sugaya's retrial in Utsunomiya District Court, serve as a warning against over-emphasizing the importance of confessions as documented in investigators' written records of oral statements.
Mr. Sugaya served 17 1/2 years of a life sentence in prison after his conviction of the May 1990 murder of a 4-year-old girl in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture. He was released last June and a new trial ordered following the results of a new DNA test.
When the police first arrested him on Dec. 2, 1991, he confessed to the crime. But according to a recording made Dec. 7, 1992, of a prosecutor interrogating him about two more unsolved cases (involving the deaths of two 5-year-old girls, one in 1979 and another in 1984), Mr. Sugaya denied involvement in all three cases: "I can absolutely say" that "I am not involved." When the prosecutor pointed out that he had confessed to the Ashikaga murder at the time of his arrest, he said he had feared being punched and kicked if he continued denying his involvement.