The National Police Agency has joined discussions with related offices about the types of criminal procedures to be used when the lay judge system is introduced in May 2009. The other offices are the Supreme Court, the Justice Ministry, the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations.
Investigators' tendency to rely heavily on suspects' confessions, which often lead to false charges, will be an important topic. The NPA has joined the talks as an observer, but it should cooperate in making the process of getting confessions transparent.
The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office in July 2006 started partly video-recording confessions in some cases. The practice has been adopted at 16 places across the nation this year. A trial is often prolonged if a defendant reverses his or her pretrial confessions or insists that investigators used coercion during interrogation. Since lay judges preside over a trial only for a limited period, ensuring the reliability of the records of defendants' oral statements will be important.