SAITAMA (Kyodo) The first foreign defendant to be tried in a lay judge trial was sentenced Friday to five years in prison at the Saitama District Court for two counts of robbery resulting in injury.
The case involving the 20-year-old Filipino man was also the first in which interpreters were used in a lay judge trial.
The defendant, who cannot be named as he was a minor when he committed the crimes, was charged with assaulting two people, along with two other juvenile accomplices, on streets in Saitama Prefecture last December and taking a total of ¥37,000 in cash and other items in the two assaults.
Prosecutors had demanded six years imprisonment, while the defense counsel had recommended 3 1/2 years.
Presiding Judge Yoshifumi Otani said the dangerous and premeditated crime threatened the lives of ordinary citizens.
"I want to tell you one thing," Otani said. "Everyone, including the judges, hope that you will be rehabilitated."
Four female and two male lay judges were selected from 100 people by lottery to decide the sentence, and two interpreters were used during the trial instead of the usual one in an apparent bid to alleviate their workload, given that lay judge trials involve more verbal exchanges than trials under the previous system.
The lay judge system, which debuted in May, requires courtroom participants to make their arguments orally so trials are easier for people who are not legal professionals to follow, which in turn means more work for the interpreters in cases involving foreign nationals.
Much of the focus in the latest case was on whether the two Tagalog interpreters could accurately convey the tone of the remarks and how their interpretation might affect the decisions of the lay judges.
As of April, there were some 4,000 courtroom interpreters covering 58 languages.