This very article says the same, if read past the headline: > Japan’s often-cited conviction rate of over 99 percent is a percentage of all prosecuted cases, n

This very article says the same, if read past the headline: > Japan’s often-cited conviction rate of over 99 percent is a percentage of all prosecuted cases, not just contested cases. It is eye-catching, but misleading, since it counts as convictions those cases in which defendants pleaded guilty. If the U.S. conviction rate were calculated in a similar manner it would also exceed 99 percent since so few cases are contested at trial (in FY 2018 only 320 of the total number of 79,704 federal defendants were acquitted at trial). I was curious why I kept seeing this article coming up as an attack on Japan when the text clearly doesn't come across that way & yep, this link is the first google result for "japan 99% conviction rate"