How is it possible that Japan has a 99% conviction rate?
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One aspect of this I don’t see others mentioning is that Japan is a civil law country, modeled after the French legal system. The differences between civil law and common law as practiced in countries like the United States are mostly subtle, but the biggest difference is that civil law countries do not have jury trials, instead it’s panels of judges who decide the merits of a case. Japan’s culture of respect means that judges are unlikely to disrespect the work of a prosecutor by handing down a not guilty verdict, and there are even a handful of cases of Japanese judges knowingly sentencing innocent people to death to avoid offending the prosecutor.
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