Fatal Accident Caused by Miscalculated Accelerator…Former Special Investigator Ace, Accuser of the Accident, Sues Toyota for “False Accidental Accident”.

The car started with the driver’s legs outside the car.

Tatsuhiro Ishikawa, 85, a former Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office special investigator, filed a lawsuit against Toyota Motor Corporation and its sales company for 50 million yen in damages for a fatal accident caused by a runaway Lexus in Tokyo in 2006, claiming that the accident was caused by a defect in the vehicle. On February 20, the Tokyo District Court ruled in favor of Mr. Ishikawa, rejecting his claim in its entirety. Although it appears to be a “false accusation” by Ishikawa, who was convicted in a criminal trial, the former “special investigative ace” apparently had something he really wanted to sue for.

The accident occurred on February 18, 2006, in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo. Mr. Ishikawa was getting out of the driver’s seat of his Lexus, which he had parked to meet a golfing friend, when the car suddenly started. The car sped off at speeds exceeding 100 km/h, striking and killing a 37-year-old man on the sidewalk.

Ishikawa was charged with manslaughter and other crimes, and in May 2011 he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, suspended for five years, on the grounds that the accident was caused by his accidentally depressing the accelerator pedal. However, two months later, in July 2011, Mr. Ishikawa filed a civil suit against Toyota Motor Corporation and others, claiming that his car was defective. He claimed that the accident was caused by a defect in the car.

The security camera footage shows that the driver’s left foot, which is believed to have stepped on the accelerator pedal, was definitely outside the car when the car started. The result of having an expert in image analysis analyze the security camera footage showed that ‘the left foot is seen outside the car. At the appeal hearing of the criminal trial, the results of that appraisal were submitted as evidence, but the judge did not mention the credibility of the appraisal at all in his ruling, and found that the driver was accelerating with his left foot. And that ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court and the sentence was confirmed. Therefore, we filed this civil trial with the intention of questioning the credibility of the silenced expert testimony,” said Masaki Kobayashi, attorney representing Mr. Ishikawa.

The expert in image analysis is Dr. Hiroki Yamauchi, professor emeritus at Ritsumeikan University. He is an image analysis instructor at the Osaka Prefectural Police Headquarters and also served as an image analysis instructor at the Metropolitan Police Department until 2008. Recently, he served as a witness for the prosecution in the trial of a former Nagano prefectural assemblyman accused of murdering his wife, and is truly an authority on car image analysis. He is an authority on car image analysis. In criminal trials, Mr. Yamauchi’s expert opinion is absolutely trusted, but for some reason, the criminal case was closed without mentioning the contents of his opinion.

Mr. Ishikawa was “fainting under stress”.

So how did the Lexus start?　That day, Mr. Ishikawa stopped his car on the street in Ebisu 2-chome to pick up his golfing friends. When he stopped the car, he did not put the shift lever in parking (P range) and left the engine running, because his Lexus has a function to keep the foot brake applied even when the shift lever is in drive (D range). When Mr. Ishikawa was about to get out of the car because his golfing friends had arrived, the Lexus started moving. According to Mr. Ishikawa’s side of the story, the situation at that time was as follows.

He opened the driver’s side door to get out of the car and rotated his body to the right, using his hip as a fulcrum, and put both of his legs out of the car. Then, with both feet still outside the vehicle and neither foot touching the road surface, the vehicle (the Lexus in which Mr. Ishikawa was riding) suddenly began to start at a low speed, as if in a creep phenomenon, even though the plaintiff (Mr. Ishikawa) was not pressing the accelerator pedal… (omitted in length). (from the complaint).

He says that his foot was out of the car, but the car started on its own.

Of course, since he was convicted, the evidence shows that Mr. Ishikawa stepped on the accelerator pedal. In the criminal trial, the prosecution presented evidence such as the pressure marks made when the accelerator pedal was pressed to the maximum and the analysis record of the car’s accident recorder, which were found to be true. In other words, the criminal trial concluded that Mr. Ishikawa’s recollection that he did not depress the accelerator pedal was mistaken. At the time of the accident,

At the time of the accident, he was driving at a high speed of more than 100 km/h, which caused him to faint due to emotional stress caused by fear and shock to the point of death” (from the plaintiff’s claim in the judgment in the civil trial).

Considering the extreme circumstances of the accident and the fact that he was 78 years old at the time, it is not surprising that Mr. Ishikawa’s memory of the accident, in which he said he did not step on the accelerator pedal, was different from the actual accident. ……

Ishikawa was a well-known ace of the Special Investigation Department, appointed as a prosecutor in 1965, and rose to prominence as a special investigator in the Lockheed case in 1976. In 1992, when the Special Investigations Bureau filed a summary indictment against former LDP Vice President Makoto Kanemaru in the 500 million yen black-market donation case, Ishikawa, who was then a prosecutor at the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office, persuaded the top leadership of the LDP to investigate Kanemaru for tax evasion, and in 1993 he succeeded in arresting him.

He was not satisfied with the verdict.

Ishikawa, who was nicknamed “Razor Tatsuhiro” during his working days, could not tolerate the judiciary ignoring the evidence he had confidently presented in the criminal trial. He filed a civil suit to settle the case, but how was Yamauchi’s expert opinion evaluated at the trial?

In the explanatory image of this case (the explanatory material of Mr. Yamauchi’s image evaluation), the image in which the witness Yamauchi testifies that it is a shoe-like object is black in color. It is not easy to identify the black parts of the images, which the witness Yamauchi testified were shoe-like, as those of shoes, and it is not possible to recognize the fact that these images were of shoes actually worn by the plaintiff at the time of the accident… (omitted in length). The testimony of the witness (Mr. Yamauchi) cannot be trusted.

The expert testimony of an authority that had always been considered the police and prosecutors’ best source of information in criminal cases was now being called “unreliable” in civil trials.

The court ruled that the expert testimony, whose credibility is always recognized in criminal trials, was “unreliable. If they had given concrete evidence and said, ‘It can’t be called a shoe,’ I would have been convinced. I have already appealed the decision, and I plan to continue to argue for the reliability of the Yamauchi testimony at the appeals court. We are planning to argue the reliability of the Yamauchi test at the appeal hearing as well.

On the other hand, what does Toyota think about this trial? Mr. Ishikawa claims, “I did not step on the accelerator pedal. When asked about their opinion on Mr. Ishikawa’s claim that he did not step on the accelerator and that there was a defect in the vehicle, Toyota’s public relations department responded as follows.

We pray for the soul of the deceased and offer our deepest condolences to the bereaved family. Toyota will continue to deliver our products and services with the safety and security of all our customers as our top priority.”

The trial in which the 85-year-old former ace of the Special Investigation Department, together with his authority on image analysis, is challenging the barriers to justice, and the decision of the appeals court will be closely watched.