JIADEP Note: Materials related to the conviction of Rosal M. Villanueva, a Filipina national convicted or murdering her live-in partner. Held illegally for ten days, not under arrest, she confessed to a crime which occurred while she was at a hospital visiting her sick daughter. Ultimately she was convicted based on a whimsical coroner's report which was contorted to fit the prosecution's story. Rosal was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison, the absolute minimum for homicide, and about ⅔ of the time given to those caught smuggling meta-amphetamines (the usual sentence is 12 years plus a fine).
Let it be known that the powers that be sat 3 prosecutors in this case, a number almost unknown in modern criminal cases.
Rosal was released from the Chiba women's prison and returned to the Philippines in 2006.
Convicted Philippine woman awarded 2 million yen
Compiled from Kyodo, staff reports
CHIBA -- Chiba Prefecture was ordered Monday to pay some 2 million yen to a Philippine woman who was illegally detained for questioning by prefectural police prior to being convicted of a 1997 murder.
In 1999, the Chiba District Court found Manalili Villanueva Rosal, 30, guilty of killing the man she lived with on Nov. 9, 1997, at their condominium in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture.
The Tokyo High Court upheld the ruling last year and Rosal is currently serving an eight-year prison term. But she filed a damages suit against the prefectural government for illegal confinement and questioning by police.
Rosal was detained and interrogated at a hotel and a police dormitory for 10 days before police had obtained an arrest warrant, the Chiba District Court said Monday in ordering the prefectural government to pay the damages.
Although she allegedly owned up to the murder during the illegal questioning, she retracted the confession before her indictment and has since pleaded innocent.
Presiding Judge Takeo Koiso said that the interrogation "far exceeded the scope of of voluntary questioning sessions" and was thus "illegal."
While defense lawyers claimed that Rosal's confession was illegally obtained and thus invalid, the Chiba District Court in 2000 admitted her confession as evidence and sentenced her to eight years in prison for the murder.
Rosal appealed to the Tokyo High Court, which last September struck her confession from the evidence. However, the high court still upheld the sentence, ruling that the conviction was supported by other evidence.
Following the high court ruling, Rosal filed a civil suit against the prefectural government seeking 20 million yen in compensation for the illegal questioning.
Lawyer Satoru Shinomiya, who represents Rosal, said that the case is not an isolated one and has shed light on a fundamental problem in the current system that allows closed-door police interrogations of suspects.
"Under the current system, any citizen, especially a foreigner, can be made (a criminal) through means that are hard to believe are still practiced in the 21st century," he said.
Soon after the high court ruling, Rosal appealed to the Supreme Court, but dropped the appeal on Apr. 28 over her exasperation with Japan's judicial system, according to Shinomiya.
"I trusted judicial and investigative authorities to realize justice, but I have been betrayed three times," Rosal was quoted as telling Shinomiya. "First came the police interrogation, followed by the two court rulings, and now I can no longer trust Japanese justice."
Still, Rosal was grateful to her Japanese supporters and reportedly said she would like to claim her innocence before the Japanese public after serving her prison term, Shinomiya said.
However, even after her release from prison, she is likely to be deported.
The Japan Times: June 3, 2003
A monument to judicial idiocy
Japan Today
Peter Hadfield
We all know that the wheels of Japanese justice move in mysterious ways — to which must now be added bizarre, contradictory and whimsical. Last week a ruling was handed down that was absurd even by traditional standards. Rosal Villanueva Manalili, a Filipina found guilty of murdering her partner five years ago, had her guilty verdict confirmed by an appeal court.
That sounds very simple, but the ruling was not.
Rosal's initial conviction depended almost entirely on her confession to police, since there was no evidence whatsoever that she had committed the crime. So during the lengthy appeal Rosal's lawyers sought to prove that the confession had been coerced. They showed how the police had illegally detained Rosal in a variety of locations, questioned her endlessly, denied her access to a lawyer, and finally extracted a confession under extreme duress. Quite rightly, the judge agreed, and threw out the confession.
But he did not throw out the case. Even without a motive, evidence or now even a confession the judge still concluded that Rosal probably did it, based on ideas of his own that were not even presented by the prosecution. Given the mountain of evidence that very clearly points to her innocence, such a judgment stands as a monument to judicial idiocy.
At 11 p.m. on the night of the murder in November 1997, Vilanueva had left her Matsudo City apartment, where the murder later took place, to watch over her asthmatic daughter at a nearby hospital (as the duty nurse testified.) At 8 a.m. she returned home, but soon afterwards ran back to the hospital in great distress. She told staff she had found the body of her boyfriend, stabbed to death.
A coroner later established that Hideyuki Takahashi had received around 80 stab and slash wounds inflicted with a knife, and 30 bruises.
Since there was no evidence against Rosal, police could not obtain an arrest warrant, so instead they detained her illegally for nine nights and 10 days, ceaselessly pressuring and questioning. Under such pressure Rosal told them whatever they wanted to hear.
But the confession simply did not fit the evidence. During an autopsy the coroner recorded Takahashi's death as between 2.15 and 5.16 a.m. Two defense coroners agreed, with a spread of opinion between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. — all times when witnesses said Rosal was at the hospital without a break. The only way to get a murder conviction was to change the time of death.
Which, of course, the coroner did. He claimed that a transcription of his original examination (recorded on tape) was wrong, and that he had actually placed the time of death at 9.16 p.m. the previous evening. The only way to check this was to listen to the original recording, which was now crucial evidence. But the police said they had destroyed the tape — along with the only copy.
Despite this deliberate destruction of evidence, there was plenty of other evidence exonerating Rosal. For example, how could a small woman launch such a frenzied attack without getting a single visible splash of blood on her clothing? Even the prosecutors had to stretch their imaginations for this one. Rosal, they argued, had stabbed her victim from a distance.
In the end the judge did not even consider this a very relevant point. He simply ignored it. He also threw out Rosal's forced confession and the ruling from the first trial. His belief in her guilt seems to be based purely on his own conclusion about the time of death, which he says gave Rosal the opportunity to murder Takahashi. Not the means, not the motive, just the opportunity.
Once someone has been chosen as a suspect in a murder case, then any rationale can be used to keep him or her in prison, even in the face of illegally extracted confessions, destroyed evidence and absence of proof.
Yet the Rosal case has exposed such absurdities in the judicial system that even the Japanese media are sitting up and taking notice. This Saturday TV Asahi (Scoop 21) is airing a program about Rosal; one that it broadcast last year while her appeal was being heard.
According to a support group, Rosal may now take her fight all the way up to the Supreme Court. Will the justices see sense? Or, like the courts that preceded them, will they believe a load of nonsense?
Japan Today
September 13, 2002
June, 2003
Greetings, Sorry for the long delay in updating you concern Rosal.
You will notice that there is a new e-mail for Rosal. The Rosal Ad Hoc
Committee fulfilled its role of campaigning on behalf of Rosal during her High
Court ruling. Ironically, we accomplished our goal of having the judge reconsider
her confession, but Rosal is still not free. At the High Court ruling the
judge threw out her confession but then introduced his own version of how Rosal
killed the victim, a version that no one had previously presented to the court.
As her lawyer quipped at a recent press conference, "The judge convicted Rosal
because the victim died."
Recent Update:
1) New home: On March 21st Rosal was moved to the newly built detention
center located behind the old detention center. This new facility is quite modern
looking from the outside. However, it is called the "Soul Crusher." Rosal
reported that all of the women, including herself, cried when they arrived at the
new facility. There are no windows in the rooms and they are never allowed
outside, even for exercising. In the old facility Rosal was able to look outside
and see the seasons change, the moon, stars, sunset, cherry trees, and even the
birds. In the new facility they do not even know what kind weather it is each
day. There is no way to mark the passage of time. This was the first year
that Rosal has not been able to see the cherry blossoms.
2) Appeal canceled: Rosal has stopped her appeal to the Supreme Court and on
May 7th her status was officially changed from detainee to prisoner. As a
prisoner she is no longer able to receive visitors or mail. She now wears a gray
uniform and must work each day. She is still physically in Kosuge but will be
transferred to a prison in August.
Rosal is especially grateful to all of the supporters who have stood beside
her since 1997. One reason she decided to stop the appeal was the thought of
having to stay in a windowless room for another 3-4 years while the Supreme
Court decides her case. Another reason was that the High Court decision left very
little room for her defense lawyers to argue her case. The judge in effect had
ruled in favor of Rosal on the point of law (throwing out a confession gained
from illegal detainment), but then turned around and made a judgment that she
must have killed the victim anyway even though he could not give a reason why
she killed the victim. While his ruling is highly questionable, there is
nothing constitutionally or procedurally wrong with it. And that is what the
Supreme Court would look at: Were Rosal's rights violated or was the procedure
flawed. There have been less than 1 in a 1000 cases in which the Supreme Court has overturned a lower court ruling. Any time spent waiting for this decision
(approximately 3-4 years) would not count to her eventual prison term. Lastly,
Rosal decided that it was time to change the venue of her struggle. In other
words, she would do her time and take her cause directly to the people. She was
given 8 1/2 years of hard labor.
3) Release date: I was able to see Rosal as an interpreter on June 5. She
said that doing time was much more difficult than she expected, but she is going
to hang in there. She has been informed of her release date: December 18,
2006. This is the last date they can hold her. At that time she will be
transferred to immigration for deportation. There is a chance that she can be paroled early from prison.
4) Civil Court Win: On November 16, 2000 Rosal filed a suit in the Chiba
District Court for being illegally detained. On June 2, 2003 the court found in
her favor and awarded her ¥2,000,000 ($17,000) plus interest since 1997. This
was a huge victory considering that the court was ruling against the government.
5) Meeting with lawyers: On July 7th from 19:30 there will be a meeting with
Rosal's lawyers to discuss the High Court decision, the Civil Court decision,
and why Rosal canceled her appeal. The location is the Japanese Bar
Association Bldg. 10 Fl. in Kasumigaseki (Exit B1). Everyone is welcome. If you need
directions let me know.
6) Future campaign: We will start a campaign in spring 2004 to raise support
for Rosal to stay in Japan after her release.
7) Contacting Rosal: Prisoners are only allowed letters and visitors from
family. However, Rosal has put myself and one other Japanese woman on the list of
people she would like to have as visitors. It will be some time before we
will know if permission will be granted. I encourage you to continue to send
letters to Rosal.
The last time I was able to visit Rosal when she was a detainee she looked
very upbeat and happy to be moving on. Yes, it was a difficult decision for her
to decide to cancel the appeal because it meant in effect that she would most
likely never be able to see her daughter again for many, many years. She has
not seen her daughter since 1997 when her daughter was 4, and in 2006 when
Rosal is released she will be most likely be deported. Her daughter does not know
where Rosal is and Rosal has not been able to contact her daughter during this
time. On behalf of Rosal,
Thank you so much for your support over the years. Especially, thank you for
letters, postcards and quick notes that keep her a part of your life. I know
that these have been a source of strength for her. She will need all she can
get to help her through the long years of prison and readjustment back to
freedom. A letter sent today is a seed for tomorrow.
I will keep you informed of future updates as new information comes available.
Charles McJilton
Advocate for Rosal
