We should maintain the level of discourse above cultural generalizations and one-sided attacks that are taken out of context

Carlos Ghosn and Japan’s ‘99% Conviction Rate’ @Diplomat_APAC https://t.co/LGxAgKEjRy

— mozu (@mozumozumozu) April 1, 2020

As noted above, in both the United States and Japan the vast majority of criminal cases are disposed of at an early stage. However, the procedures for clearing cases are quite different.

In the United States, this is done through plea bargains. Most cases referred to prosecutors result in indictments (83.6 percent in federal cases). The vast majority of prosecuted cases are decided by guilty pleas achieved through plea bargains (over 97 percent at the federal level; see here for U.S. FY 2016 data), and less than 3 percent of cases go to trial.

In Japan the majority of cases are cleared by prosecutors through the exercise of broad discretion to refrain from bringing any indictment. Unlike plea bargains in the United States, the suspect receives no punishment and has no criminal record. Prosecutors decide to indict in less than one-third of the referred cases (for Japanese FY2017 data in English, see here and here). Some 90 percent of the cases indicted in district courts result in confessions and guilty pleas, although in Japan these cases still go to trial. The remaining 10 percent of the indicted cases are contested at trial.

So how do conviction rates in the United States and Japan compare for similarly contested trials? In the U.S. the conviction rate for contested trials is about 83 percent. In Japan, the conviction rate for contested cases is over 96 percent. This difference of roughly 13 percent is significant for defendants, but hardly the yawning chasm one would imagine from reading recent commentary on the Ghosn case. The fact remains that conviction rates in both countries are strikingly high.

Japan’s often-cited conviction rate of over 99 percent is a percentage of all prosecuted cases, not just contested cases. It is eye-catching, but misleading, since it counts as convictions those cases in which defendants pleaded guilty. If the U.S. conviction rate were calculated in a similar manner it would also exceed 99 percent since so few cases are contested at trial (in FY 2018 only 320 of the total number of 79,704 federal defendants were acquitted at trial).



we should also be conscious of making fair comparisons to maintain the level of discourse above cultural generalizations and one-sided attacks that are taken out of context.