Ladies, gentlemen, and gangsters of the jury

The Asahi reports that police officials are concerned that the new lay judge system, which relies on randomly selected citizens as candidates, could assign yakuza gang members as citizen judges for trials on serious criminal cases:

The citizen judge law does not have any stipulation on gangsters.

“Gangsters exploit every opportunity to manipulate any situation to their advantage,” a senior police investigator said. “There is a good chance that they may slip in as citizen judges and stand in the way of justice while staying on the right side of the law.”

Prosecutors are hoping that they can weed out possible gangsters during the candidate interview process, but there is still a chance that a few gangsters will end up as lay judges.

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http://www.victorymanual.com Alex

If this is a legitimate thing to worry about – Yakuza becoming jury members – then there are a lot more serious issues that the Japanese police officials need to be taking care of. For one, why are there so many yakuza that exist as potential jury member selections in the first place?

No, I don’t buy it. I’m calling them out on this one. The police officials are worried about their power grab slipping away, and about securing their 96% conviction rate without regard to whether or not the accused is actually guilty.

George

I couldn’t have said it better myself.
stereo

This is nothing but a manipulation by police officials.
See what the law says.

Law on trials involving lay-judges
Article 14
Following person cannot serve as a lay-judge.
Item 2. A person who has been punished by imprisonment or other graver punishment.

So, the police are worried about Yakuza who have never been sent to jail. But how can they tell such Yakuza from good citizens? So much for presumed innocence.

If we give in to the police and give them the power to oust what they call Yakuza, they will sure to abuse that power.

http://www.zdwonline.de Haf

Is this like the American jury system?

So before, there was no jury in Japanese courts?

stereo

Except for a short period of time before WW2, there had been no jury trials in Japan.

Level3

No juries, everyone’s fate in the hands of one judge, and even tales of judges who have never found anyone innocent. [Sounds unlikely to me, but not impossible under this system.]

Add in that even if you’re found innocent, the PROSECUTOR can appeal and you can go back to trial again and be found guilty by a higher court! No such thing as “double jeopardy” here.

Japan’s legal system can’t get much worse for the innocent, the use of jurors can only help. The main problem is most Japanese jurors will probably be manipulated by the judges, prosecutors and police into finding everyone guilty anyway, at least until there are a bunch of TV shows about the juror system [but will the powers-that-be "allow" the production of TV shows that encourage a questioning attitude and presumption of innocence?]

http://www.victorymanual.com Alex

Just make 12 Angry Men a part of the school curriculum in Japan!

Level3

Damn straight on 12 Angry Men.
Would love to see a Japanese remake for 2009.

Philip

There is one http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104330/

Well a sort of parody of 12 angry men.

It was quite good actually. Cool camera angles!

Ladies, gentlemen, and gangsters of the jury

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