High court throws out lay judge death sentence over murders of five in 2015
A high court scrapped on Monday a lower court ruling that had sentenced a man to death for killing five people on Awaji Island in 2015, sentencing him instead to life in prison after reviewing his mental state at the time. The Osaka High Court ...
Japan proposal to lower age for charging youths as adults scrapped due to no consensus, sources say
The government plans to abandon for the time being an amendment to the age cap under juvenile law that would lower the age when individuals can be tried as adults from 20 years old to 18.
Past participants in Japan's lay judge system reveal its challenges
"The accused was sitting right there, so close to me, and yet I felt like there was an unbridgeable distance between us." Tomomitsu Shibuya, a 55-year-old pastor from the city of Aomori who served as a lay judge almost 10 years ago, recalls the day ...
Police recorded 88% of interrogations in lay judge cases across Japan in fiscal 2018
Police took complete video recordings during 87.6 percent of fiscal 2018 interrogations in criminal cases bound for lay judge trials, National Police Agency data showed Thursday. As the recording of interrogation video and audio will become mandatory in June based on the revised criminal procedure ...
Third of Japan's lay judges say experience was stressful, but system viewed positively overall
One in three citizen judges recently surveyed by Kyodo News said passing judgment on their fellow peers in court was stressful, but a large majority still reflected on their experience as being positive. Of the 342 respondents in the survey conducted ahead of the lay ...
Japan Supreme Court chief says lay judge system well received but tweaks needed to spur interest
The Supreme Court said Wednesday that in order to ease burdens placed on citizen judges, improvements are necessary.
Resolving issues surrounding lay judges hold the key to sustaining the system.
Architect of Japan's lay judge system to become chief justice at Supreme Court
The Cabinet on Friday tapped Supreme Court Justice Naoto Otani, the architect of Japan's lay judge system, to be head of the top court starting next month. Otani, 65, will succeed Itsuro Terada as chief justice after Terada, 69, retires in January. He is known for ...
Police getting better about providing fully recorded interrogations for serious crimes
More lay judge trials are making use of fully recorded interrogations ever since police adopted new guidelines to avoid coerced confessions, the National Police Agency said Thursday. In fiscal 2016 ended in March, 2,324 cases subject to such trials had complete recordings of the interrogations, ...
In wake of yakuza incident, most courts taking steps to enhance safety of lay judges
Most courts that hold trials under the lay judge system are trying to enhance the safety of the participants after citizen judges in a gangster's trial were approached by people associated with the defendant, Many safety steps have been introduced with the help of court ...
Two men indicted for allegedly intimidating lay judges in yakuza trial
Prosecutors indicted two men Friday on suspicion of intimidating lay judges during the trial of a senior member of a yakuza crime syndicate in the first such charges since Japan's lay judge system was introduced in 2009. The two are Toshimi Kusumoto, a former gang ...
