The trial of actor Manabu Oshio, charged with aggravated abandonment leading to death in a case in which a 30-year-old woman died after taking the illegal drug MDMA or Ecstasy, was the first trial involving a celebrity under the 1-year-old lay judge system.
The Sept. 17 ruling at the Tokyo District Court shows that the six lay judges — four men and two women — who sat with three professional judges made their decision strictly on the basis of evidence, without being swayed by media coverage of the high-profile trial.
The court gave the 32-year-old actor 2 1/2 years' imprisonment although the prosecution had demanded six years in prison. The ruling determined that he obtained the drug from a man on July 31, 2009, in an apartment in Tokyo's Roppongi Hills, let Ms. Kaori Tanaka take the drug on the afternoon of Aug. 2 the same year and failed to seek appropriate help when she overdosed. But the ruling denied that his abandonment of the woman caused her death. Mr. Oshio appealed the ruling.