By May 2009, Japan will introduce a lay judge system in which ordinary citizens will take part in criminal proceedings as judges to help decide the outcomes of trials. The system is gradually taking shape as the Supreme Court has made public a simulation for the process of choosing candidates for lay judges.
For the first time in Japan's judicial history, ordinary citizens will have their opinions directly reflected in trials, although Japan used a limited jury system between 1928 and 1943 in which jurors were chosen from among male taxpayers over the age of 30. The use of lay judges is a big change in the nation's legal system. The Supreme Court, the Justice Ministry, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, lawyers, law professors and others need to make concerted efforts to enlighten the public about the lay judge system, to facilitate their participation in it and to eliminate potential problems with it.
Lay judges will sit in the first, lower-court trials involving crimes for which the penalty upon conviction is death, life imprisonment or imprisonment for a fixed term, or crimes in which the perpetrators' deliberate acts led to someone's death, including murder, acts of arson and dangerous driving.