Who Are Ordinary People?

Dispute over crime of conspiracy is still ongoing in the Diet session. In the Judicial Committee of House of Representatives on Friday, the leading parties and the opposite parties are sharply split on whether the crime would be applied to the ordinary people. Even how Minister of Justice and bureaucrats in Ministry of Justice stress exclusion of the ordinary people, the bill of revised Organized Crime Punishment Law can punish innocent citizens. Shinzo Abe administration has reiterated that Japan is a country where rule of law is working.

Minister of Justice, Katsutoshi Kaneda, has been explaining that the ordinary people would not be included in the targets of the law, trying to emphasize the difference from formerly dismissed crime of conspiracy in former administration. But, State Minister of Justice, Masahito Moriyama, told in the Committee a week ago that the ordinary people could not be excluded from the target of punishment. The opposite parties accused the contradiction between Kaneda and Moriyama on Friday.

Kaneda defined “ordinary people” as not having relationship with organized criminal group. While the bill determined that organized crime group was the target for punishment, Kaneda repeated that “ordinary people” were the ones who were not related to the groups that would be targeted by the law. In this definition, all the people targeted by the law would be excluded from ordinary people. In other words, any ordinary people can be targeted as a member of criminal group.

The lawmakers with opposite parties argued that an ordinary people could be included in a criminal group, even though he or she did not have any recognition of affiliating to it. Moriyama explained that “gray people,” who were not confirmed as a member of criminal group, could not be said as not related to criminal group. Police cannot determine whether the person is a criminal or not unless making detailed investigation. Accordingly, police will target ordinary people to determine whether they are related to criminal group.

The bill has a provision that penalty for a person who surrenders before activation of organized crime will be reduced. A lawmaker with Democratic Party, Takeshi Shina, argued that the provision would cause false charge on innocent people. As long as substantiation of crime of conspiracy depends on confession of the member, intended false confession can make an innocent people a main plotter of organized crime. Although Kaneda stressed that objective evidence would be respected, it is law enforcement organization that decides objectivity of evidence. One would call it rule of police.