Process
In many respects, the new system is very different from a common law jury system. It is not a (lay) jury of an adversarial system of common law but one that involves a (lay) "judge" found in inquisitorial systems of civil law countries, such as those in continental Europe and Latin America. In a common law adversarial system, the judge acts as a referee over the contest between the defence attorney and the prosecutor, in which the two sides present the facts of their case to the panel of jurors; the judge in this system is mainly the referee of court procedure and decides only the applicable law.
In the civil law inquisitorial system, the entire panel of judges conduct a public investigation of the crime at the trial, and pass the verdict and sentence those found guilty. For this reason, each member of the panel can initiate the examination of evidence and witnesses, and by a majority (including at least one professional judge, as explained below) can pass a guilty verdict and impose a penalty. Lay judges roles are nevertheless constrained; notably, legal interpretations and determinations remain with the professional judges. Unlike the Anglo-American rule for criminal jury trials, both convictions and acquittals as well as sentence remain subject to appeal by the prosecution and the defence.
The Japanese system is apparently unique in that the panel consists of six lay judges, chosen randomly from the public, together with three professional judges, who come together for a single trial (like an Anglo-American jury) but serve as lay judges. As with any jury or lay judge system, it places a large amount of judicial power on randomly chosen members of the public with the aim of democratizing the judicial process. In this, Japan's law states its purpose explicitly as seeking “the promotion of the public’s understanding of the judicial system and . . . their confidence in it.”
A guilty verdict requires a numerical majority of nine judges that includes at least one professional judge. Accordingly, the three professional judges as a collective have a de facto veto on any conviction that would be delivered by the lay judges. The Ministry of Justice specifically avoided using the term "jury" (Baishin-in) and use the term "lay judge" (Saiban-in) instead. Therefore, the current system is categorically not a jury system though this misunderstanding persists in common law countries due to lack of understanding of civil law criminal procedure.
Read more about this topic: Lay Judges In Japan, Saiban-in (lay Judges) in Japan
Famous quotes containing the word process:
“come peace or war, the progress of America and Europe
Becomes a long process of deterioration—”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“By Modernism I mean the positive rejection of the past and the blind belief in the process of change, in novelty for its own sake, in the idea that progress through time equates with cultural progress; in the cult of individuality, originality and self-expression.”
—Dan Cruickshank (b. 1949)
“At last a vision has been vouchsafed to us of our life as a whole. We see the bad with the good.... With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life, without weakening or sentimentalizing it.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)