A 15-member advisory panel to Justice Minister Satsuki Eda on March 31 prepared a set of proposals for reform of the prosecution system. Unfortunately, the panel, which includes four lawyers, two former judges, two former public prosecutors and two academics, failed to come up with strong-enough measures to prevent the filing of false charges against suspects.
Important issues were put off for discussion by another forum to be set up in the future.
The panel was set up after Ms. Atsuko Muraki, a former health ministry official, was acquitted last September of a charge of ordering fabrication of an official document to make an organization for disabled people eligible for a postal service discount. In the trial, the Osaka District Court quashed core evidence against her — oral statements by witnesses — saying it was produced as a result of prosecutors' leading questions and by coercion. It also surfaced that a prosecutor had tampered with an important piece of evidence, a floppy disk.