Prosecutor given 18-month jail term for tampering with evidence

OSAKA (Kyodo) - The Osaka District Court on Tuesday sentenced a former prosecutor to 18 months in prison for tampering with evidence during investigations into a postal discount system abuse case in which a senior government official was acquitted last year.
Tsunehiko Maeda, 43, a former prosecutor at the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office's elite investigative team, was convicted for altering data on a floppy disk confiscated during the investigation, in a scandal that has shaken the credibility of Japan's judicial system.
''This is an unparalleled crime in the history of criminal trials and (Maeda's) responsibility is extremely grave,'' Presiding Judge Hiroyuki Nakagawa said in handing down the sentence.
Maeda, in charge of the postal abuse case, arrested senior welfare ministry official Atsuko Muraki although he was aware that the data he later altered did not support her suspected involvement, Nakagawa said.
''Even if he was under heavy pressure as the principal prosecutor, his act was aberrant as a prosecutor,'' he said.
Maeda, wearing a black suit with his hair cropped short, nodded three times softly when the prison term was announced. He is believed unlikely to appeal the ruling, sources close to him said.
Prosecutors had sought a two-year prison term for Maeda.
The ruling was given after only two hearings as the defendant admitted the charge against him. But questions linger over whether efforts to reveal the truth behind the case were fully made, and an impression was left that the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office had tried to draw a curtain over the case as early as possible, observers say.
Concerning the ruling, Muraki said she thinks Maeda has apologized not because he feels responsibility to the public but because he feels he has caused trouble to the organization to which he belonged.
Tadafumi Oshima, deputy chief prosecutor at the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office, said, ''We deeply apologize again for the act defendant Maeda committed while serving as a prosecutor in our office. We take the ruling seriously and intend to continue to make our utmost efforts to restore trust in prosecutors.''
The district court allowed 150 days out of the period Maeda has spent in detention to count toward the 18-month term, making his actual jail term a little more than one year. He was arrested last September.
According to the ruling, Maeda rewrote the data-update date on the floppy disk on July 13, 2009, to increase the likelihood of convicting Muraki.
Muraki was arrested in June 2009 and later indicted on a charge of forging a document to enable an unqualified organization to take advantage of the postal discount system for handicapped people, but she was acquitted in September last year.
The floppy disk in question was confiscated from Tsutomu Kamimura, a section chief at the welfare ministry who was a subordinate to Muraki at that time and is standing trial in the case.
The Supreme Public Prosecutors Office, which handled the proceedings for Maeda's trial, as well as the defendant's attorneys said that behind the data tampering was strong pressure from his supervisor Hiromichi Otsubo.
But the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office did not press Maeda to give a clear response even though he kept making vague replies to questions about his direct motive such as, ''I cannot explain what I wanted to do.''
Otsubo, together with his deputy Motoaki Saga, were indicted last October for covering up the tampering.