Introducing the lay judge system: part 2 of 2

By ( August 7, 2009 at 22:26) · Filed under Polls, Society

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If you were selected as a lay judge, would you attend court? graph of japanese statistics[part 1][part 2]

Shortly after the lay judge system was introduced in Japan earier this year, but before the first actual trial involving members of the public, the Cabinet Office Japan conducted a survey on behalf of the Ministry of Justice into the lay judge system.

Demographics

Between the 28th of May and 7th of June 2009 3,000 members of the public were randomly selected to participate in the survey, conducted by face-to-face interviews. 68.5% of the sample, or 2,054, were available and agreed to answer the questionnaire. 46.3% of them were male, 9.9% in their twenties, 16.0% in their thirties, 17.9% in their forties, 18.0% in their fifties, 21.1% in their sixties, and 17.0% aged seventy or older.

Japan Probe recently published a story from a tip of mine on a curious 3D animated reconstruction of the first lay judge trial, which I hope you find entertainly weird too.

Now, the first trial has completed, one where the defendant admitted to murdering a South Korean neighbour, but the trial was more about sentencing. The prosecution wanted 16 years, lawyers representing the victim’s family wanted 20 or more, but the defence said that their client had been provoked and felt 16 years was too long. As I alluded to in the first part of the survey, many armchair gaijin pundits were sure that he’d get off with a minimal sentence as it was only a foreigner he killed, or that the lay people would not dare disagree with the judge. The actual outcome was that he got 15 years,
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Introducing the lay judge system: part 1 of 2

By ( August 7, 2009 at 00:25) · Filed under Polls, Society

What kind of crime are you most interested in? graph of japanese statistics[part 1][part 2]

Shortly after the lay judge system was introduced in Japan earier this year, but before the first actual trial involving members of the public, the Cabinet Office Japan conducted a survey on behalf of the Ministry of Justice into the lay judge system.

Demographics

Between the 28th of May and 7th of June 2009 3,000 members of the public were randomly selected to participate in the survey, conducted by face-to-face interviews. 68.5% of the sample, or 2,054, were available and agreed to answer the questionnaire. 46.3% of them were male, 9.9% in their twenties, 16.0% in their thirties, 17.9% in their forties, 18.0% in their fifties, 21.1% in their sixties, and 17.0% aged seventy or older.

My pet hate about the new system is that too many people, including reputable newspapers who should know better, call it a jury system and think it must be unfair because it differs from the UK and US systems that they are familiar with. Here the lay judges get a chance to question the victim and they sit in deliberation with the professional judges to decide not just guilt or innocence, but also the sentencing.

My second pet hate is… ah, I have a million and one pet hates about the cynical, and quite often flat-out racist attitudes adopted by many ex-pats in Japan regarding how badly they believe the lay judges will perform. I invite them all to use this survey to back up their prejudices, if they can.
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