Kuchikomi Dec. 09, 2008 - 09:22AM JST ( 24 )

“I’m interested in the jury system. But I’m scared of the idea that I might have to vote on the death penalty for someone because I don’t have any legal knowledge,” says a housewife wife in her 50s in Kumamoto Prefecture. “I’ve got a big mouth and I’d probably talk about what we discuss in court to my friends. Someone might come after me if they don’t like my verdict,” the woman said.

She was one of 295,000 citizens who recently received a document from the Supreme Court informing them that they have been selected as candidates for lay jurors. However, a call center set up by the Supreme Court received 389 calls in the first week, most of which were from people asking how they could be exempted from jury duty.

A business man in his 40s says, “My co-worker got the letter from the Supreme Court. He’s very worried. Our company will give us paid days off if we are called up for jury duty. But the company itself is very small and the rest of the staff would have a lot of trouble trying to do the extra work, even for a little while. He said he wants to sneak out of the trial somehow.”

The Supreme Court has ruled that candidates can be exempted from jury duty if they are over 70, a student, pregnant, seriously ill or injured, giving daily care to parents or have indispensable financial responsibilities at work or home.

However, Kiichi Nishino, professor at Niigata University’s Law School, says, “Except for ‘over 70’, ‘student’ and ‘pregnancy,’ the other reasons are too vague for exemption.”

What is more controversial is that the trials for lay juries will be conducted over three days after the court picks specific issues through the pretrial procedures to enable a quick and efficient discussion. The Supreme Court estimates that about 70% of lay jury trials will end within three days.

“This ‘within three days’ policy may result in predetermined conclusions in trials,” says Taro Okubo, a former judge at the Tokyo High Court. “The three-day trial, which is just for detaining busy lay juries, would not be in the interest of defendants. Defendants would lose opportunities for their counterarguments during the trial. Judges will be just timekeepers whose job is to return lay juries home on schedule.”

The media have also expressed concern over the secrecy of lay jury trials because lay juries have to keep details of a trial confidential forever. If a lay juror leaks information on a trial, he/she will be liable for up to six months in jail or fined up to 500,000. Some media professionals say the new justice system, which aims at making the process more transparent to the public, will turn out to be “closed trials” because third parties cannot verify trial procedures.

Since lay jury trials will examine serious cases, including crimes where capital punishment and life imprisonment are applicable, it is expected that lay juries will have to make significantly serious decisions.

Okubo says, “From my experience, even professional judges hesitate to sentence defendants to death. I think lay jurors will be very careful about capital punishment because they will be mindful of criticism and revenge against them and sympathy for defendants.”

Nishino also points out that a new rule, through which families of victims can join in the trial and make appeals to judges, started in Dec 1. He says lay juries cannot make rational decisions due to emotional appeals by families of victims during trials.

While the jury system has been adopted in many developed nations, Japan’s jury system is not necessarily something the public wants. (Translated by Taro Fujimoto)