The lay judge system, in which randomly selected ordinary citizens sit alongside professional judges in trials involving certain heinous crimes, was introduced in 2009 as an effort to get the diverse ways of thinking of regular people reflected in court decisions and promote a greater public understanding of and trust in the judiciary system. A study panel recently launched by the Justice Ministry comprising judges, prosecutors, lawyers, criminal law scholars and representatives from crime victim organizations is tasked with reviewing the system as called for in a 2015 amendment to the law that introduced the system. Some of the issues surrounding lay judges — including an increase in the number of candidates refusing to accept the duty as trial proceedings take increasingly long times to complete — hold the key to sustaining the system.
Over the past decade, the average time spent on lay judge trial proceedings from opening session to ruling increased from 3.7 days in 2009 to 10.6 days as of 2017. In a murder case that concluded last November at a local branch of the Kobe District Court, it took a record 207 days to hand down a life sentence to the accused. That meant the lay judges in the case, including ordinary salaried workers and housewives, had to bear the burden of attending court sessions for more than half a year. When the hearing schedule for the case was unveiled, roughly 80 percent of the citizens called on as lay judge candidates declined, citing "important tasks" at work that they could not skip.
Lay judge candidates are randomly selected from voter registration lists, but the ratio of candidates who have refused to fulfill their civic duty has increased from 53.1 percent in 2009 to 66 percent in 2017 — with the figure rising in proportion to the growth in the average time spent on each case. The rising number of people refusing to fulfill their civic duty could undermine the public's understanding and support of the lay judge system. In fact, the 2015 amendment said that criminal trials that might take an extremely long period to deliberate in court can be handled solely by professional judges. But so far this has not taken place.