A Reign of Terror as a Single Crime: Japan's Supreme Court on Continuous Assault

Japanese Attorney at Law - Bengoshi L.L.

• 6 min read
A Reign of Terror as a Single Crime: Japan's Supreme Court on Continuous Assault

On March 17, 2014, the Supreme Court of Japan issued a decision that provided critical clarity on how the legal system should treat prolonged, horrific acts of violence. The case, involving multiple charges including homicide, bodily injury resulting in death, and abandonment of a corpse, presented a complex question regarding two specific sets of assaults: when a victim is subjected to a series of brutal attacks by a dominant aggressor over weeks or months, does each attack constitute a separate crime, or can the entire campaign of violence be legally defined as a single, comprehensive offense?

The Court's ruling affirmed the latter, upholding the conviction of the defendant for two single counts of bodily injury, each encompassing a multitude of savage acts. This decision is a landmark in the application of the Japanese legal doctrine known as hōkatsu-ichizai (a "comprehensive single offense"), particularly in cases of domestic violence, abuse, and subjugation, where the unifying factor is not just the similarity of the acts but the nature of the abusive relationship itself.

Factual Background: Two Campaigns of Subjugation

The Supreme Court's decision focused on two separate sets of events involving two different victims, which the lower courts had labeled the "A Case" and the "E Case."

The A Case

The defendant exercised complete control over the victim, A, dictating his finances and living situation. Motivated by a desire for "amusement" and to vent his frustrations, the defendant subjected A to a sustained period of abuse. The indictment detailed two main courses of conduct:

  1. Between approximately January and early February 2002, on numerous occasions at A's residence and other locations, the defendant repeatedly assaulted A, primarily by forcibly pressing both of the victim's hands onto a lit kerosene stove.
  2. In conspiracy with another individual, D, between approximately January and early April 2002, on numerous occasions at A's residence, the defendant repeatedly beat A's lower body with a metal bat.

As a result of this repeated and cumulative violence, A suffered severe injuries. While it was impossible to link each specific act of assault to a particular resulting wound, the overall outcome was a collection of horrific injuries, including skin peeled from the right hand, an infected wound on the left hand, and deep contusions on his left buttock and hip.

The E Case

The defendant also dominated victim E, who served as his personal driver. Between mid-September and October 18, 2006, the defendant, in conspiracy with accomplices F, G, and H, subjected E to a terrifying series of assaults. These acts, motivated by the defendant's desire to display his power and to torment his subordinates, took place in various locations, including inside a moving car, a parked car, and on the street. The violence included:

  1. On numerous occasions, the defendant punched E's head and left ear with his fists and with a spray can.
  2. On one specific occasion, the defendant struck E's face with a hard plastic beam, causing trigeminal neuralgia.
  3. On numerous occasions, the defendant or his accomplices doused E's lower body with fuel and set it on fire with a lighter, and kicked his lower body.

This campaign of terror resulted in devastating, long-term injuries for E, including a torn and lacerated left ear, head contusions, trigeminal neuralgia, severe burns from his buttocks down his legs, and scar contractures on both knees, which required approximately four months of hospitalization.

Both the trial court (Osaka District Court) and the appellate court (Osaka High Court) determined that the series of assaults against A and the series of assaults against E each constituted a single, comprehensive offense of bodily injury (shōgai).

The defendant appealed to the Supreme Court. His defense lawyers argued that this consolidation was improper. They contended that each distinct act of violence was a separate crime and should be treated as such under the rules for concurrent offenses (heigō-zai). The defense's strategy was rooted in a procedural argument: if the acts were deemed to be multiple separate crimes, the prosecution's indictment, which bundled them together, would be considered fatally vague and lacking the required specificity for each charge, potentially leading to a dismissal of the case.

The Supreme Court's Decision: Upholding the "Comprehensive Single Offense"

The Supreme Court rejected the appeal and affirmed the lower courts' rulings. The Court meticulously outlined its reasoning, concluding that the entire course of conduct in each case could be "holistically evaluated and understood as a single, comprehensive offense."

The Court’s analysis was based on a combination of factors that, when viewed together, painted a picture of a single, unified criminal enterprise in each case:

  • A Defined Timeframe: The assaults occurred within a "fixed period of time" (approximately one month in the E Case and four months in the A Case).
  • The Abusive Relationship: Crucially, the acts were committed against the "background of the human relationship" in which the defendant dominated and controlled the victims through violence and intimidation.
  • Limited Locations: The crimes took place in "somewhat limited places" connected to this abusive dynamic (e.g., the victim's home, the defendant's car).
  • Common Motives and Repeated Intent: The defendant acted out of "common motives" (such as amusement, frustration, or a display of power) and "repeatedly formed the criminal intent" for the assaults within the context of this ongoing relationship.
  • Repetitive Nature of the Violence: The violence consisted of the "repeated and cumulative execution of assaults of a primarily similar nature."
  • A Single, Indivisible Result: Although it was impossible to causally link each individual assault to a specific injury or the worsening of an injury, the end result was a specific, identifiable set of injuries inflicted upon a single victim.

Based on these circumstances, the Court found that the prosecution's decision to charge each campaign of abuse as a single count of bodily injury was legally sound. The Court also held that the indictments were sufficiently specific because they clearly identified the accomplices, victims, time periods, locations, methods of assault, and resulting injuries, thereby allowing the charges to be distinguished from any other potential crimes.

This 2014 decision is significant because it expands upon and refines the criteria for applying the hōkatsu-ichizai doctrine, particularly in situations where the factors traditionally used to justify it—such as strict similarity of acts and close temporal proximity—are partially weakened.

The "Comprehensive Single Offense" Doctrine

Hōkatsu-ichizai is a judicial doctrine, not a concept explicitly defined by statute in the Penal Code. It allows courts to treat multiple criminal acts that harm the same legal interest as a single crime when they are unified by a common course of conduct and intent. This stands in contrast to treating them as concurrent offenses (heigō-zai), which often results in a heavier sentence.

Historically, courts have relied on a set of factors to determine if a series of acts can be bundled into a single offense:

  1. Unity of the Legal Interest Harmed: The acts target the same victim and the same type of legal protection (e.g., bodily integrity).
  2. Similarity of the Criminal Acts: The methods of the crime are the same or highly similar.
  3. Temporal and Spatial Proximity: The acts occur close together in time and place.
  4. Unity of Criminal Intent: The acts stem from a single, continuous criminal intent.

A landmark 1956 Supreme Court case, for example, found that a doctor who administered 54 illegal narcotic injections to the same patient over three and a half months to alleviate withdrawal symptoms had committed a single offense. The Court reasoned that the acts were of the same nature, directed at the same victim, and based on a single, continuous intent.

Pushing the Boundaries: The Primacy of the Abusive Relationship

The 2014 case presented a more complex scenario. In both the A and E cases, the traditional factors were not perfectly aligned.

  • The assaults were not entirely identical (burning, beating with a bat, punching with a spray can).
  • The timeframe was prolonged, stretching over weeks and months.
  • The locations were varied, not confined to a single spot.
  • The defendant's intent was not continuous but was "repeatedly formed" for each attack, with slightly different motivations.

Despite these weaknesses, the Supreme Court found a single offense. The decisive factor was the Court's emphasis on the "background of the human relationship." The defendant's absolute domination and control over the victims created a unifying context. Within this abusive dynamic, the different types of assaults, committed in different places and for various malign reasons, were not seen as independent criminal impulses. Instead, they were all manifestations of the single, overarching reality of the defendant's violent subjugation of his victims. This abusive relationship served as the glue that bound the disparate acts together, allowing for their holistic evaluation as one crime.

The Doctrine's Limits

This emphasis on the unifying power of an abusive relationship is not without limits. A later Sapporo High Court case, which was upheld by the Supreme Court, illustrates this. In that case, a father's abuse of his infant daughter was separated into two distinct time periods. Between the two periods, the child had been temporarily taken into the custody of child protective services due to suspicion of abuse before being returned home. The court ruled that this intervention constituted a severance of the continuous relationship. The abuse that occurred before the intervention and the abuse that occurred after her return were treated as two separate crimes (as concurrent offenses). This shows that for a series of acts to be considered a single offense, the underlying abusive dynamic must be continuous and uninterrupted by significant external events.

In conclusion, the 2014 Supreme Court decision provides a powerful legal tool for prosecutors dealing with cases of prolonged and systematic abuse. By recognizing that the very nature of a dominant, abusive relationship can serve as the primary unifying factor, the Court has allowed the law to more accurately reflect the reality of such terrifying situations: that they are often not a series of isolated incidents, but a single, sustained campaign of criminal violence.