Seventy percent of respondents to a government questionnaire on the new jury system to be introduced for criminal trials by 2009 said they do not want to become "citizen judges," as participants will be called, the Cabinet Office said Saturday.
Although public awareness of the new judicial system has been heightened, with 71.5 percent of the respondents saying they know about it, people appear reluctant to join in as only 25.6 percent said they want to take part.
The most popular reasons chosen by those who do not want to participate were that it is difficult to determine whether a defendant is guilty, at 46.5 percent, and that they do not want to judge another person, at 46.4 percent.