Three court-appointed lawyers on April 20 indicted a former deputy chief of Hyogo Prefecture's Akashi police station for allegedly failing to prevent a fatal stampede during a fireworks event in 2001. He became the first person to be indicted under the new prosecution inquest system, which went into effect in May 2009. Two votes in July and January calling for indictment by Kobe's No. 2 prosecution inquest committee, a panel of 11 citizens, provided the legal basis for overturning the prosecution's decision to not indict.
The July 21, 2001, incident resulted in the deaths of 11 people and injured more than 180. The police sent papers on 12 people to the Kobe District Public Prosecutors Office. The office indicted five of them — a police officer and a private guard who were at the scene and three Akashi city government officials — but did not indict the police station chief (who has since passed away) and the deputy chief. The bereaved families of the deceased criticized the prosecution for only focusing on whether professional negligence was committed on the day of the accident.
The Kobe District Court, which found all five of the indicted people guilty in December 2004, said that the policing plan made in advance to prevent problems during the fireworks event was slipshod. In a separate civil lawsuit filed by bereaved families seeking compensation, the same court said that the root cause of the stampede was the inadequacy of the policing plan, and that the police station chief and others did not give any policing instructions although they noticed via a TV monitor that a dangerous situation was developing.