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A 27-year-old has been arrested for sexually assaulting a woman eight years ago in Tokyo’s Nakano Ward.
According to police, the suspect lives in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture and was 19 at the time of the crime, which means he was a minor and cannot be named, Sankei Shimbun reported.
In July of 2011, the man is accused of assaulting the woman in her 20s as she walked home. The victim told police the man called her cute and then followed her around for about 300 meters before grabbing her from behind. He pressed a knife against her neck and dragged her onto the premises of a building, where he raped her after threatening to cut her throat with a knife if she resisted.
According to police, the two did not know each other.
Police found that DNA left on the woman’s clothing matched that of the suspect who was recently arrested for another case. However, the suspect is denying the charge and claims to have no recollection of the incident.
© Japan Today
17 Comments
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girl_in_tokyo
They have DNA. That's some pretty damming evidence.
I also find it very unlikely the police just chose a guy at radom to fill a quota. That isn't how police investigations work.
Haaa Nemui
Yeah maybe read the article. As for a statute of limitations and scientific purposes... that almost sounds perverse.
JJ Jetplane
Statute of limitations.
https://japan2.usembassy.gov/pdfs/wwwf-acs-victims.pdf
He committed another crime and his DNA was a match for a crime I’m sure he thought he had gotten away with.
Sid
In fact the UK has no statute of limitations for serious crimes. I never really understood why if you've committed rape or murder for example you should escape punishment, just because a long time has passed.
Haaa Nemui
People say it a lot but it actually isn't a legal defense.
Bugle Boy of Company B
What IS the statute of limitations on this?
Luddite
There should not be a statute of limitations for any crime.
Omachi
Only in Japan is no recollection an actual defense.
Agreed. It isn't a requirement of a defendant to recall/confess since the presumption is innocent. The onus is on the prosecution to prove guilt.
Norman Goodman
Not quite correct. Humans share like 99.8 percent of DNA with gorillas. What is unique is the sequencing. But a forensic DNA test only shows a few of the sequences. Then it relies on statistics to say a person can or cannot be ruled out as a suspect, rather than clearly declare this person is the perp.
The blind faith people have in scientific discovery is akin to the blind faith people have had in religious doctrine. Even worse is the blind faith they have in the "authorities". Look at the negative votes I have received for merely asking a question. One would think modern people would be further along by now.
Omachi
No statute of limitations? That would be a quite arbitrary society to live in. Where were you on March 16th, 1972 – since we believe that you stole 110yen (found on the street but not turned into the police) on that date. Please prove it wasn’t you – while we hold you in confinement without access to your travel records, diaries, etc. – and prevent you from contacting people. Oh, and if you confess, we’ll let you go with a slap on the wrist.
Bongo Titos
Only in Japan is no recollection an actual defense.
Do the hustle
This creep needs to fess-up. With the way the Japanese courts work he’ll get a hefty sentence if proven guilty. Whereas, if he is to confess and express his regret he’ll get a slap on the wrist.
Norman Goodman
Another case of WHAT??
Norman Goodman
DNA evidence is far better for finding someone innocent than guilty, not that the garbage TV shows that mis-educate the public are telling anybody that. DNA might be perfect, but DNA collection, testing, analysis and results interpretation (that's right...interpretation) are far from perfect. In Europe they thought they were on the heels of a prolific serial killer on the scale of Jack the Ripper. Turns out they were all using cotton swabs laced with DNA of a worker in a cotton swap factory in Austria. Dwayne Jackson went to jail after police mixed up DNA samples. In another case, the technician could not even match two blood samples and a saliva sample from the same person, yet decided semen collected from the crime scene was a match. That young man, Josiah Sutton, spend four years in jail before his conviction was overturned.
DNA testing even in the cleanest of circumstances is laborious and expensive. But DNA samples are easily taintable and easy to mix up. You cannot even actually see the DNA and sometimes not even the sample, but just a label on a bag. MIstakes happen. Incompetence happens. But because the processes are laborious and expensive, samples are not sent to multiple labs to ensure accuracy. Its usually one lab, and one tech handling a case against lower income Joe Blow. Send samples to multiple labs, you are liable to get multiple results. But they don't do that.
So all they got on this guy is a supposed match between his DNA they took from his body where and DNA on her clothes that supposedly came from his body where? I sure hope they gather some other evidence. Can the victim identify him in a line up at least?
Daniel Naumoff
Ho-ho, quota filling right there folks. Unless they got the culprit, no way to know though teehee~~~
Imagine the guy not doing anything bad for 7 years. That's some mental fortitude.
Now what is the statute of limitations for this one? I would like to know for... uhm... scientific purposes.