OSAKA -- The Osaka High Court on Tuesday nullified a lower court ruling and rejected the claim of a defendant in a 1998 murder case seeking damages from a publisher who printed his name and photograph although he was a minor at the time of the crime. Presiding Judge Makoto Nemoto ruled that even if the reporting had violated the Juvenile Law, it would not be a violation of privacy if the matter involved an issue of appropriate interest to society and if the descriptions were not improper. It is the first judicial decision to favor the constitutional freedom of expression over the Juvenile Law. The plaintiff in the suit, a 21-year-old man, stands accused of fatally stabbing a kindergartner and two other people in a stabbing spree in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture. The plaintiff had demanded that publisher Shinchosha and others pay a total of 22 million yen for violating his human rights by running his name and photo in the monthly magazine Shincho 45, in violation of the Juvenile Law, according to the suit. The Osaka District Court had ruled in favor of the plaintiff and ordered the publisher to pay 2.5 million yen in damages. In Tuesday's ruling, the court said the Juvenile Law is aimed at providing sufficient consideration for minors in the belief that they should have opportunities to undergo corrective treatment, and does not give minors who have committed a criminal offense the right to not have their names appear in print. Furthermore, the court noted that the gravity of the stabbing made it a case of high social interest at the time. Although the ruling questioned whether a photograph was necessary for the article, it said that the "contents and method of description used could not be called inappropriate, and the use of the plaintiff's actual name does not violate his rights." According to the ruling, Shinchosha ran the story in the March 1998 issue of the magazine, at a time when other media were not identifying the suspect.
