Sleepless Travels Reloaded

Episode 2 begins with Kurosaki bumping into his old high school friend, Satoshi. They have a drink and reminisce about old times, ie how Kurosaki was a bit of a loner, and always hung out on the roof top ledge of the school building. Satoshi would play basketball on the roof and one day climbed over the fence surrounding the roof to lie down where Kurosaki was on the ledge too.

Tsurara moves into her new apartment which is coincidentally next door to Kurosaki’s. And Kurosaki is the landlord too! (Whoo, explains how his apartment can have a secret room).

Kurosaki buys info off that creepy old guy again, and it turns out that the target is an Akasagi/Shirosagi - a marriage swindler who also has a touch of Shirosagi too. And she’s the older sister of Satoshi, who is in the marriage swindling business too.

So Kurosaki puts on the character of a wealthy university student who had fallen in love at first sight with the target…and wants to open a flower shop with the person he marries.

Amongst other things, it appears that Satoshi is currently swindling Yukari since she’s rich. Satoshi and Kurosaki start to hang out again, and Satoshi reveals that he’s a marriage swindler. He urges Kurosaki to do it too as it’s easy money.

At the same time though, Kurosaki is already setting up to swindle Satoshi’s sister anyway. Satoshi’s sister suspects Kurosaki but goes along with it anyway as she thinks she’s better. In the end Kurosaki wins through some interesting e-banking mojo.

Kurosaki helps Yukari get her revenge on Satoshi, and she gets back her money, which is part of the money Kurosaki defrauded from Satoshi’s oneesan. Kurosaki says some sort-of kind words to Yukari and she develops an annoying crush on Kurosaki. Actually I feel more sorry for Satoshi/sister than Yukari. Satoshi’s parents died a couple of years ago so they swindle for a living. And Satoshi was really happy he found his best friend again. Whereas Yukari’s just an annoying way too genki sort of girl. During one of their conversations, Kurosaki also secretly videotaped Satoshi confessing to swindling. And that his sister did it too. He sent it to the police and they nabbed both siblings. Satoshi spots Kurosaki waiting outside his apartment beyonf the fence, and basically asks him why he betrayed him (aha, fence imagery again). Kurosaki says that he did it because he didn’t want to see his friend swindling. Tough luck though, couldn’t Kurosaki have found a better way? From my impression of Japanese companies’ views of convicted criminals…I don’t think Satoshi will find it easy to ever get a decent salaryman job. Basically, Satoshi is definitely doomed to a life of dishonesty now…

Anyway 2 things interested me about this episode. Partway through either Tsurara or Yukari state that the Japanese police can’t help normal citizens when it came to swindling. If Japan really has no laws on dishonesty or deception…it must have a really crap criminal code. Perhaps they were talking about the practical effect of the swindling, ie the company disappears and there is no one to charge the crime with. I guess that means it’s not so much of a defect in the laws, it’s more a statement of the effectiveness of the police! I wonder just how much of this show is an accurate portrayel of Japanese society…

The second thing that perked my ears was when Satoshi’s sister said that the tape Kurosaki secretly filmed was inadmissable as evidence. That’s quite true (in Australia). In fact, we dealt with that point recently in Civil and Criminal Procedure/Litigation Practice.

Firstly, Satoshi was talking about his involvement in swindling, and also his sister’s. Now that can be admitted as evidence against Satoshi, because it was Satoshi talking. But it can’t be admitted against his sister because then it would be hearsay evidence.

Secondly, just because it was taped secretly doesn’t mean the prosecution can’t admit it. Firstly, there are strict laws governing how suspects should be treated while interviewing them. After forming a reasonable suspicion that they committed the crime, they have to caution the suspect - you have the right to remain silent, but anything you say may and will be used against you. So if the police were the ones interviewing Satoshi, obviously he hadn’t been cautioned. It would be extremely prejudicial to the accused to allow such evidence to go before a jury. Also, since the common law right to avoid self-incrimination is so strong, having the police allow you to shoot your mouth off leads to an unfair trial through unfair procedure carried out by the police.

Anyway, this is a bit of a moot point as it wasn’t the police who secretly taped it; there was no wrongdoing on the police’ part. So by accepting the evidence, the court won’t be seen as condoning sneaky behaviour on the police’ part, which would be an affront to public policy.

The court has a discretion (see Bunning v Cross, Swathfield and Pavic) to exclude evidence where there are public policy concerns, or where there may be an unfair trial (the emphasis is not so much on unfairness to the accused). Based on the caselaw in my course, there is none because most of it is based on police incorretly collecting evidence. Hmm, but actually I haven’t come across secretly-taped videos done by private citizens…I would assume there wouldn’t be a problem though.

Anyway yeah, poor Satoshi will have more damning evidence against him.

Under South Australian law.

Conclusion: if you’ve done a crime, don’t be a big mouth. If the police ask you questions, you don’t have to answer. They can’t make you answer any questions, either before or after they form a reasonable suspicion that you’ve committed a crime.

Oh yeah, I just remembered another thing. Right at the end, while Satoshi is appealing to Kurosagi, the police guy comes and smashes Satoshi’s head against the fence. While it probably didn’t hurt Satoshi very much…it’s pretty unprofessional, and it would definitely be a cause for complaint here.

Well, I don’t know how much that applies in Singapore though. Apparantly some police torture is permissable in interrogation of suspects in Singapore. What a police state. Blah.

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