The Osaka District Court on Tuesday sentenced a former prosecutor to 18 months' imprisonment for tampering with evidence in a case against a former welfare ministry official charged with ordering a subordinate to fabricate a document making an unqualified organization eligible for the postal discount system. The official, Ms. Atsuko Muraki, was acquitted in September, more than a year after she and her subordinate were arrested on July 4, 2009.
The court decided that Tsunehiko Maeda, the former prosecutor with the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office's special investigation squad, on July 13, 2009, changed the final update time on a floppy disk, confiscated from Ms. Muraki's subordinate, to make its data conform with the prosecution's scenario. The floppy contained the text of the document in question.
Ms. Muraki was acquitted mainly because the same court decided that core evidence - testimonies by witnesses - against her resulted from prosecutors' leading questions and coercion. Although the altered floppy disk was not used as evidence in the trial, what Maeda did was unprecedented in the history of criminal trials. The ruling Tuesday said he bears an extremely grave responsibility, as his actions could have undermined the basis of the judiciary system. His two former bosses have been indicted on a charge of harboring a suspect, that is Maeda.