Round three

The crowd in the court hushed as the judge entered the room. The two lawyers stood up, probably out of reflex. I was a bit slow and the people in the gallery didn't seem to know what to do so they kept sitting down. 

Round three. 

There was some tension in the air and excitement how at the players would react, but above all was the knowledge that what would follow was going to be difficult to understand, quite short and yet somehow intensely boring.

I had been worried that we wouldn't get enough people to court. Also worried that no press would turn up to the press conference afterwards. It's important to keep the court full with my supporters and show the judge that I have the community behind me, and I am very grateful for the support people have been showing. But as the case goes on and the conclusion seems to be getting further away rather than closer, it feels a little more difficult to keep people's attention. 

When we delivered the complaint to court in April there was a good turnout although I don't have an exact headcount. There were four or five TV cameras at the press conference afterwards and several newspaper reporters. We appeared on TV news programmes that evening and in the newspapers the following day. 

The court has a limited capacity and at the first court hearing in May the supporters would not all fit and some had to wait outside. This was a shame although they didn't really miss much. At the first hearing there were three judges. The senior judge, sitting in the middle, apparently had rejected an appeal by Iwao Hakamada in the 1990s. Hakamada was sentenced to death in 1968 for a murder in 1966. He was finally acquitted last month after almost half a century on death row. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y9x6zrkrro 

I learnt recently that the youngest of the three judges makes the decision, and in the subsequent hearings only the youngest judge has been in attendance. Rather than full hearings, the court days in July and October were styled as research meetings, which has several implications. First, my lawyer is able to have a video link in the courtroom so that his partners in Tokyo can join the proceedings. Second, this is not a public hearing so they need a full list of everyone who is going to be in the gallery. Third, because it is not a public hearing, the press are not allowed to attend. Fourth, only one judge is in attendance. Finally, for the reasons above, it is a little less formal and the judge is freer to ask questions and give opinions on the case.

It is a good thing that our lawyer can include his partners in Tokyo, and a good thing that the judge is more able to express himself, but I'm not convinced the omission of the press is helping our publicity drive. On the other hand I think this case suffers from a high level of legal explanation relative to the light it sheds on the case and there are no punchy headlines or soundbites, so publicity is difficult. 

Practically speaking, getting names of people attending has been tricky. The court wants to know who is coming a week in advance but the hearings are happening at three o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon and while some people can commit ahead of time, a lot of people don't know whether they will be able to make it until the day. 

At the hearing in July I think we got exactly the right number of people turning up to support, so it was a full house inside and nobody waiting outside. It was a bit chaotic in court as some of them hadn't told me they were coming so they had to write their names in. It was a little more orderly this time although there were still many changed from the list of names we had handed in. As the hearing started there was only one empty seat. 

The hearing seemed to go well and there were journalists and one camera at the press conference, although no articles seem to have come out this time. I'll write about the legal content of the hearing next.