"I Didn't Know What I Was Carrying": Intent in Drug Courier Cases, and Culpability in Deportation

A friend asked me to deliver a bag. They offered to pay my travel costs, so I agreed. I was told it was souvenirs. Accounts like these fill the enquiries we receive from people said to have carried something. Saying you did not know what was inside is not a hopeless argument: an offence requires intent (故意). How far the argument carries, though, depends on whether it fits the case as a whole. This article explains how intent is assessed, and then turns to a point this office regards as central: what contesting intent in the criminal case means for the immigration process that follows.

Key points

• An offence requires intent, and without awareness of what was in the package there is no intent for a drug offence.
• In practice the issue is whether the person is assessed as having carried the item while accepting that the contents might be unlawful, that is, whether there was conditional intent.
• Article 24, item 4, sub-item (chi) of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act (入管法24条4号チ) requires a "person who has been convicted", so if intent is negated in the criminal case the premise for deportation (退去強制) never arises.
• Our office has litigation pending that reconsiders, from the standpoint of the principle of individual culpability, the established immigration practice under which neither intent nor negligence is required for grounds for deportation.
• Contesting intent at the criminal stage and preserving a record of that process provides the basis for later arguments in the immigration process.

How does Japanese law treat someone who says they did not know what was in the bag?

Drug offences, like other offences, require intent. Even if drugs were inside the bag you carried, if you were not aware of that, intent is absent. An account of not knowing is therefore an argument with direct legal significance.

The question is the degree of awareness. In practice, intent is treated as established not only where the person knew for certain that the item was a drug, but also where the person is assessed as having thought the contents might be unlawful and as having carried the item anyway, willing to take that risk. This is what is called conditional intent.

The issue is therefore often not a binary choice between knowing and not knowing, but a finer assessment: how much suspicion the person held, and what attitude they took towards it in going ahead.

What circumstances are used to decide whether there was intent?

A person's state of mind cannot be observed directly, so in practice an inference is attempted from the accumulation of external circumstances. In courier cases, the following are frequently examined.

Many of these facts are not decisive on their own; the assessment depends on the picture they form together. Put the other way round, showing concretely how the request came about and what the person's circumstances were can call the premises of the inference itself into question.

A payment that is unnaturally high for the work involved does invite suspicion, but some cases admit of another explanation, for instance that the promise included help finding work or support with living costs at the destination. A conclusion cannot be drawn from an abstract sense that something seems odd.

• How close the relationship with the person who made the request was, and how the request came about
• Whether there was payment, and whether the amount matched the work of carrying the item
• Who paid the travel and accommodation costs, and whether the itinerary was natural
• The weight, appearance and locking of the luggage, and whether there was any opportunity to check the contents
• Whether the handover was arranged in a way that differs from ordinary logistics
• Whether the person had made similar deliveries before

How does contesting intent in the criminal case affect my right to stay?

The first thing to note is that article 24, item 4, sub-item (chi) of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act makes a "person who has been convicted" subject to deportation. The provision asks nothing about the type or weight of the sentence, but it does presuppose the fact of a conviction. Conversely, if intent is negated at the criminal stage, whether through non-prosecution or an acquittal, the premise of the provision never arises.

For a foreign client this is decisive. Obtaining a suspended sentence at trial still leaves the ground for deportation under sub-item (chi) established. Where there is objectively room to contest intent, switching early to a strategy of reducing the sentence can be a choice that costs a great deal in residence terms.

This is not to say that contesting a case is advantageous in itself. Determining whether there is room to contest at all, after scrutinising the evidence, comes first. Where the decision is to contest, consistency of statements, the gathering of corroborating material, and the approach to questioning all have to be designed from the earliest stage.

Is intent or negligence really irrelevant to deportation?

Immigration practice has for many years proceeded on the basis that neither intent nor negligence is required when determining grounds for deportation. The reason usually given is that deportation is an administrative disposition rather than a punishment.

Yet deportation strips a person, at a stroke, of the foundation of their life, of living together with their family, and of continued employment. Can it be applied to a person who bears no culpability, on the formal ground alone that it is not a punishment? Should the principle of individual culpability, well established in criminal law, not extend to deportation as an administrative disposition? Our office considers this a question that ought to be raised squarely.

In litigation to assist a woman wrongly accused of facilitating illegal employment and facing deportation, attorney Daisuke Matsumura is currently pursuing a case that reconsiders the established practice under which neither intent nor negligence is required for grounds for deportation. The point is still being litigated and we cannot predict the outcome. Even so, the fact that such an argument is being tested in court is, we think, worth knowing for anyone facing a similar problem.

Cases where a person is said to have acted as a courier, where the contents of a package they were holding are in dispute, or where they are said not to have known the nature of something handed to them by a co-defendant: in all of these, the presence or absence of intent matters in both the criminal and the immigration process. How far intent was contested at the criminal stage, and what record was left, becomes the foundation of the later immigration arguments.

What to preserve during the criminal case

If the second and third lines of defence are in view, material gathered during the criminal process has to be preserved deliberately. A good deal of information is lost with the passage of time and cannot be recovered by starting to look for it once the criminal case is over.

In concrete terms: communication records showing how the request came about, documents relating to travel arrangements, exchanges concerning payment, material showing employment and living circumstances both in the home country and in Japan, and documents evidencing family relationships. The record of what account the client gave consistently during questioning is itself significant.

In the context of special permission to stay (在留特別許可), article 50(5) sets out as statutory factors the reason for wishing to remain, family relationships, conduct, the circumstances that led to entering Japan, the length of stay, the legal status held during that time, the facts giving rise to deportation, and the need for humanitarian consideration. Showing concretely what "the facts giving rise to deportation" actually consisted of, in terms of the degree of the person's involvement, is another reason the criminal record proves its worth.

Case results and how we work

The three matters below, concerning cases where intent or the client's state of mind was in issue and cases concerning residence, are those we are able to describe publicly. Past results reflect the particular circumstances of those cases and are not a guarantee of a similar outcome.

Attorney Daisuke Matsumura personally handles every stage, from the first visit at the detention facility through to the close of trial. Where intent is contested, the work of hearing the client's account in fine detail and repeatedly checking it against supporting material is unavoidable, and keeping the case with one lawyer matters here. For Chinese we have a dedicated interpreter on staff who is experienced in cases involving foreign nationals; separate from the interpreter appointed by the investigating authorities, this interpreter works for the client and is available throughout the criminal process. For languages other than Chinese, we arrange an interpreter according to the needs of the case. Residence matters after the criminal case ends are handled together with an affiliated administrative scrivener.

• In litigation to assist a woman wrongly accused of facilitating illegal employment and facing deportation, we are pursuing a case testing the reach of the principle of individual culpability and of culpability based on fault, with a view to overturning the established practice under which neither intent nor negligence is required for grounds for deportation. In that same matter we obtained special permission to stay in a case where the offence of facilitating illegal employment had been found, which had no precedent.
• A client prosecuted under the Stimulants Control Act for possession with profit-making purpose (営利目的) was acquitted following exhaustive analysis of the evidence together with examination of the defendant and cross-examination. It was a case in which a finding on a subjective element was contested directly against the evidence.
• In a matter where the client was accused of acting as a collector in an organised fraud scheme and was rearrested several times, we handled the questioning carefully and built up our arguments and evidence, obtaining decisions not to prosecute (不起訴処分) on every count.

In cases involving people said to have carried something, line up the external facts alone and every case looks like the same picture. Yet how the person came to accept the bag, the circumstances they were living in, and the relationships that made refusal difficult differ from one person to the next. Putting those differences into words and supporting them with material is necessary not only for the criminal case but for the residence process that follows. The question whether deportation should reach a person who bears no culpability is still being litigated. This article is a general explanation; for your own case, consult a lawyer directly. Past results reflect the particular circumstances of those cases and are not a guarantee of a similar outcome.

This article reflects the law as at August 2026.

About the author

Daisuke Matsumura, Attorney at Law
Dai-Ichi Tokyo Bar Association (registration no. 59077, admitted 2019)
Funado International Law Office (Fuse Building Main Wing 3F, 3-4-10 Takada, Toshima-ku, Tokyo)
Practice focused on criminal defence for foreign nationals and immigration proceedings.
Results include an acquittal in a Stimulants Control Act case (possession for the purpose of profit), non-prosecution in organised fraud cases, and special permission to stay in cases regarded as difficult.

Funado International Law Office
Website: https://matsumura-lawoffice.jp/
WeChat ID: matsumura1119