Nick Baker - Japan

March 04

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On 27 October 2005, the High Court in Tokyo upheld the guilty verdict against Nick, but reduced his sentence from 14 years to 11. He was also fined 3m Yen (£14,500).

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Nick Baker, a 32 year old British citizen and father of a 3-year-old son, arrived in Tokyo 13 April 2002 with his travel companion Mr Jones, in order to buy some memorabilia ahead of the World Cup. Mr Jones was the first one to arrive at the luggage carousel. When Nick Baker caught up with him, he was handed Mr Jones’ suitcase and told to start queuing at customs while Mr Jones waited to collect the remaining luggage. Nick agreed. At customs, he was asked to open the suitcase for inspection. He did so, informing the officers that the case actually belonged to his ‘mate’, pointing at Mr Jones who was leaving the customs area.

It turned out that Mr Jones' suitcase had a false bottom and a total of 41,120 ecstasy tablets together with 992.5 grams of cocaine were found. This was the largest quantity of ecstasy ever seized in Japan. Nick was immediately arrested and, in accordance with Japanese legal practice, held and intensively interrogated for 23 days. He was not granted access to a lawyer and was eventually charged.

At the interrogation stage, most Japanese detainees are asked to sign a confession and add a fingerprint as their endorsement. However, in cases involving foreigners, the statement of the accused is written in Japanese with a cursory orally translated summary. The detainee is then asked to sign the Japanese document.

Nick was falsely led to believe that he would be allowed to return home once he had signed the document. Only when the statement was translated for Nick by his Japanese defence lawyer did he find out that it was fabricated and inaccurate. For example, each time Nick speaks of "my mate's bag", this is translated as "my bag", and it is implied that Nick had "confessed" that he knew he was carrying drugs. The prosecution used these statements, together with the presence of the drugs, as key pieces of evidence.

On 12 June 2003 Nick was found guilty by a judge who had not acquitted a single defendant in more than 10 years. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison (one year less than the maximum sentence) and fined 5 million yen (£27,000 approx) or a further 500 days of hard labour in lieu.

Prison conditions are extremely hard and are run with an elaborate system of punishments. Since his arrest nearly two years ago, Nick has not been allowed to make a phone call home, is forced to sit cross-legged on a concrete floor for hours and, due to the lack of heating, suffers from frostbite to his fingers and feet.

Fair Trial Issues

1. During a period of 23 day, Nick was interrogated by as many as 6 police officers at any one time, with his hands tied behind his back and shackled to a chair without ever having access to legal assistance.
2. He was held in solitary confinement for more than 10 months for refusing to admit guilt.
3. Nick's statement was authenticated by the investigating officer and the prosecutor behind closed doors and without the benefit of audio recordings of the proceedings. Such recordings, which are standard practice in the UK during all police interviews, would have enabled the court to determine precisely what was said during these interviews.
4. The Judges took the prosecution evidence at face value (it should be noted that the verdict is an almost word-for-word copy of the prosecution's indictment), and did not allow the submission of defence evidence.
5. No enquiries were made into Mr Jones, despite the fact that he has similar previous convictions and is currently awaiting trial in Belgium for attempted drug smuggling. In this case as well, ecstasy tablets (from the same batch as the ones seized in Tokyo) were found in a bag carried by Mr Jones’ travelling companion. However the Belgian authorities released the travelling companion after realising that Mr Jones was the person responsible.
6. The conviction rate in Japan in 99%.

The appeal will be heard at the Tokyo High Court on 23 March 2004. However Nick’s chances are not good; in 2002 only 0.25% of all cases succeeded on appeal.