Work Text:
Japan Penal Code Article 199 - Homicide
A person who kills another person is punished by the death penalty or imprisonment for life or for a definite term of not less than 5 years.
When Higuruma was in his first year of undergrad properly studying criminal law for the first time, the succinctness of the definition of murder was a relief to him.
A person who kills another person without justification. Duh. A person killing an animal is not murder. Even if the animal becomes another person's property, it is still not murder.
Murder is murder the way the reasonable person sees murder. No ifs and buts. It made it very easy to write papers, to answer problem questions, to understand what he saw when he shadowed other professionals. However, fifteen odd years later and Higuruma is better read, better experienced, and better equipped to understand that the definition of murder being as simple as it was made it, in fact, all the more complex.
Of course, there was comparing murder case to murder case, understanding what sort of precedent may be afoot and what the judge could be aiming for as advised based on the facts of the case. There was injury causing death, manslaughter, versus injury with oblique intent to cause death, assisted suicide, indecent assault causing death… as here, a potential death penalty may be meted due to the murder being committed during the proceedings of a robbery. Allegedly.
Here’s the dirty little secret, though: killing another is killing another. Someone who killed in self-defense versus in cold blood was a murderer all the same and would be convicted as such in the eyes of the court. The stigma was the same no matter the cause, and that meant that Higuruma was defending murderers against a system that labelled them such before they even stepped in the courtroom, not even counting once his clientele left, free or in cuffs, to live with that label forevermore. Try getting a job, living a life when you're not viewed as proven not guilty, but rather not proven guilty.
Even still, it's not that Higuruma particularly intended to let his clients go to jail, and indeed, he had the track record to prove it, but convictions happened far too often. Or rather, not enough. The legal system was such that prosecutors avoided taking cases that wouldn't lead to a clear and quick conviction, but again, all that lead to was preemptive labelings of guilt, and usually to the little people. Someone from the LDP caught with their hand in the cookie jar- 50 million yen in bribes? Forget about it.
Well, politicians don't do the murdering, even if they make the systems that lead to death. 'Social murder.' That was Engels, wasn't that? Higuruma was left to clean up their social crimes. Biglaw would salivated for a guy like him, but Higuruma did his job because with the clientele who came to him, he honestly, truly cared. Even when the little guy normally didn't have the resources, he wanted to be that last line of clarity in making sure the justice system was actually working as it should- that it was convicting who it should be, and not those it shouldn't.
Clearly, the judge couldn't have understood that if Keita was not on the scene, he was not on the scene. Clearly, if the moment he actually gets someone, the zero point zero one percent, a verdict of not guilty, the press started baying for his blood, calling him some bribing fuck over the evidence that was on the table...
This was a game he was never supposed to win. Higuruma was stupid.
Murder is a man killing another. In other places, even with intent and action present, you could still get a manslaughter conviction for that, not that that mattered here. Not in amazing, 99.9% conviction, guilty as a foregone conclusion, superior justice system Japan. No judicial review, no advisory board, no critic would even point out to the contrary, the truth, and yet here he was. Was this appeal ordered just so the judge could get one on him? For the press accusing him of being corrupt?
No, that’s just usual procedure. You knew that coming in, the ever-quieting rational part of his brain pointed out. Usual procedure?
Higuruma wanted to jump out from behind the stands and wring the judge’s neck. Break it, even. Better yet, he could actually get the job done. He smoldered, hands almost bringing themselves up into a chokehold before he had to put them down for some illusion of professionality.
But then, he felt a cold weight in his right hand and looked down.
Another country would maybe give him a different conviction for what he was about to do, but it's all words on paper anyway.
UK Public General Acts: Coroners and Justice Act 2009 s.54(1)
- Where a person (“D”) kills or is a party to the killing of another (“V”), D is not to be convicted of murder if—
(a) D's acts and omissions in doing or being a party to the killing resulted from D's loss of self-control,
(b) the loss of self-control had a qualifying trigger, and
(c) a person of D's sex and age, with a normal degree of tolerance and self-restraint and in the circumstances of D, might have reacted in the same or in a similar way to D.
s.55 — Meaning of “qualifying trigger”
(1) This section applies for the purposes of section 54.
(2) A loss of self-control had a qualifying trigger if subsection (3), (4) or (5) applies.
(3) This subsection applies if D's loss of self-control was attributable to D's fear of serious violence from V against D or another identified person.
(4) This subsection applies if D's loss of self-control was attributable to a thing or things done or said (or both) which—
(a) constituted circumstances of an extremely grave character, and
(b) caused D to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged.