Japan’s ‘lay judge’ system to be revised

Execution chamber
at Tokyo's Detention Center

Having reached its third birthday, the Japanese Lay Judge judicial system is undergoing a mandatory evaluation.

Issues such as whether citizens should be allowed to preside over more serious cases and confidentiality agreements will be the main points of discussion.

The Japan Times reports that the Justice Ministry will be deciding on possible changes after hearing from an 11-member panel consisting of lawyers, citizen’s groups representative and media organizations.

So far, almost 21,000 people have served as lay judges and they have prosecuted almost 5,000 defendants – 14 of whom were sentenced to hang.

But what exactly is the lay judge system, and why is it being revised?

Countries like America and Australia work under a common law jury system, where members of the public are selected at random, asked to hear the evidence of a case and decide as a group what the outcome should be.

But the Japanese system, which was reintroduced in 2009, asks six randomly selected citizens – lay judges – to work with three actual judges to decide the verdict and sentencing of the case. Unlike common-law jurors, these lay judges are asked to investigate and question the facts of a case. In this sense, they have much more responsibility than jurors.

The official judges act as referees and provide guidance for the lay judges and verdict is decided on a majority-rules, not unanimous, basis. The lay judges preside over all kinds of cases including sex crimes and death penalty cases.

Overall, the lay-judge system is thought to be functioning well, so the revision is more a matter of protocol than investigating problems in the system.

But while there may be no changes to the system, issues surrounding whether or not lay judges should preside over death penalty cases will be discussed.

Not long after the system was reintroduced, the lay judges were accused of being too heavy handed with their sentencing.

On the other hand, a separate article in the Yomuri has shown that lay judges gave more suspended sentences to those accused of murder, arson and robbery resulting in injury because they expected the defendants to rehabilitate themselves.

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Source: asiancorrespondent.com, June 3, 2012