Fire, Coerced Confession, and Wrongful Conviction: A Tale of Two Countries

Abstract

In July of 1995, a garage fire killed an 11-year-old girl in the city of Osaka. In December of 1996, a grease fire killed three people in New Castle, Delaware (USA). Though the fires were accidental, police coerced confessions and secured convictions in both cases. This paper will compare the two cases and argue that the criminal justice authorities created crimes and carried out willful prosecutions against innocent suspects. Though unusual in the field of wrongful conviction research, this paper will ask and attempt to answer why the arrests occurred. This paper will also assert that if the fires occurred today, it is unlikely that either the American or Japanese defendants would be convicted. This is due to three reasons: first, a rise in the consciousness of police interrogation and false confessions among the bar, the judiciary, and the general public in both countries; second, advances in the understanding of fire science; and third, in regard to Japan, the advent of the mixed jury system.