Two paths to justice

日米の裁判の差

In Tokyo, the sluggish, stop-and-go trial of Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara, focusing on a crime committed in 1995, finally ended Oct. 31, 7 1/2 years after it began. To be accurate, the period of deliberations ended; the trial will not be over until the Tokyo District Court hands down its ruling in late February.

Throughout those years, the media's attention was understandably intermittent, and public interest waned, although it flared again as the lawyers made their closing arguments. Despite the sensational nature of the main charge against Asahara — the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system that killed 12 people — media coverage was mostly businesslike, non-speculative, low-key. For long stretches, there was nothing to cover at all. The trial was not being held behind closed doors, but it was so protracted that the public's desire to watch simply dried up. Following it closely would have been rather like watching a government bureaucracy at work for 7 1/2 years.

In Virginia, meanwhile, the trial of John Allen Muhammad, the older of the two men suspected of carrying out the lethal sniper attacks that froze the Washington metropolitan area last fall, is moving ahead briskly. The trial of the younger suspect, Lee Boyd Malvo, started Nov. 10. Muhammad's prosecutors finish presenting their case the same day, just three weeks after hearings began. Defense lawyers are expected to spend as few as two or three days making their case. Consider this: Even though both cases concerned incidents of domestic terrorism that claimed a similar number of lives, the American trials are likely to be wrapped up in about one-thirtieth of the time taken for the Japanese one.

Partly because of this speed, perhaps, the runup to the American trials has drawn a very different kind of media attention. Blitz would not be too strong a word. The snipers' three-week-long rampage has been relived in books and newspapers, and on television. Secondary characters, from Malvo's mother to victims' relatives to courthouse personnel, have been interviewed at length. Betting that the public won't have time to grow bored, the media have deemed no detail too trivial to include in their saturation coverage of Muhammad's trial. The result? Literally a "show" of justice, in which the point seems to be public entertainment rather than a sober settling of accounts.

Do such differences matter? In terms of justice being done, probably not. Basic courtroom procedures are the same in both countries: an elaborate and scrupulous dance of prosecution and defense, testimony and rebuttal, evidence and counterevidence and, finally, a considered verdict, be it from judges or jury. What goes on outside the courtroom — whether the public is bored or transfixed, informed or not — does not affect this fixed ritual. Despite the widespread public assumption of the guilt of Asahara, Muhammad and Malvo, none of them has been, or will be, tried in a kangaroo court.

But in terms of justice being seen to be done, the question is harder to answer. The perceptions created by the way a trial is conducted do influence perceptions of a justice system as a whole. Thus, Asahara's trial has probably reinforced the impression that Japanese courts are pointlessly slow-moving, somehow secretive, rigidly scripted and a bit of a farce, reaching largely predetermined outcomes. The sniper trials will reinforce the view that American justice is conducted in a circuslike atmosphere in which the requirements of the media — for speed, drama, access or whatever — sometimes trump the strict requirements of justice.

Each country, each legal system, has its way of doing things. But as two notorious trials peak together, is a good time to reflect on the pros and cons of these different approaches, and on what each could learn from the other.

The Japan Times Weekly
Nov. 15, 2003
(C) All rights reserved

      日本では、オウム真理教の教祖・麻原彰晃被告に対する一連の公判が初公判から7年半過ぎた10月31日、東京地裁で結審した。判決は来年2月下旬に言い渡される。

      麻原被告は12人が死亡した1995年の地下鉄サリン事件などの首謀者とされるが、公判の報道は大体事務的で控えめだった。公判があまりにも長引いたので、国民は興味を失ってしまった。

      一方、米首都圏で昨年の秋に起きた連続狙撃事件で逮捕・起訴されたジョン・アレン・ムハマド被告の裁判は迅速に進行している。同じく起訴されているリー・ボイド・マルボ被告に対する公判は今週始まる。ムハマド被告に対する検察側の論告は10日に終わり、弁護側は2、3日で最終弁論を終える。

      日米の事件は、ほぼ同数の死者を出したが、米国の裁判は日本の裁判の30分の1の時間で終わりそうだ。

      米国の裁判に先立って、メディアは、容疑者の親族から裁判所の職員まで取材して報道合戦を繰り広げた。その結果、ムハマド公判はショー、または娯楽と化してしまった。

      日米両国で裁判の進行は、検察・弁護側の意見陳述、証言と反論、証拠調べ、陪審の評決、または裁判官の判決などについて大差はない。日米の容疑者が人民裁判にかけられるおそれはない。

      しかし裁判から受ける印象は相当違う。麻原公判は不必要に時間がかかり、秘密に包まれており、決められた台本に従って行われ、結果は始めから分かっているという印象が強い。米国狙撃事件の公判は、メディア主導の「サーカス」裁判で、公正な司法が犠牲になっているという印象である。

      日米の裁判は終結に向かいつつあるが、両国が互いに司法制度の特長を考察し、学べる点があるか否か研究するよい機会だ。