Editorial
Lay judges' duty of confidentiality, mental anguish need further consideration
A lay judge who participated in the trial of a man charged with murdering a neighbor said he felt a sense of grave responsibility for handing down a ruling on the defendant.
"When I thought about the defendant and the victim last night, I felt how unreasonable our society is and almost shed tears," the lay judge told a news conference after he and other citizen judges, as well as professional judges, handed down a 15-year prison term on the defendant in response to prosecutors' demand for a 16-year sentence.
Criminal trials can greatly affect defendants' lives. The lay judge's remarks demonstrated that he was fully aware of his own responsibilities in participating in the trial.
Six months have passed since the lay judge system was introduced on May 21. News conferences by lay judges at courts across the country suggest that citizens have taken their responsibilities in criminal trials seriously. Legal experts have highly evaluated the performance of citizen judges.
According to a survey conducted by the Supreme Court, a majority of the 79 respondents who have served as lay judges were initially reluctant to perform their duties before they were appointed, but 97.5 percent of them felt they had good experiences after the trials.
Various problems involving the lay judge system have also surfaced. One of them is lay judges' duty of confidentiality. Specifically, lay judges are legally required to keep the details of their behind-the-scenes deliberations confidential, and violators are subject to punishment. Therefore, lay judges are mainly asked about how they felt about participating in criminal trials during post-trial news conferences. Court clerks frequently interrupt questions and answers citing citizen judges' duty of confidentiality.
The details of deliberations that lay judges are required to keep secret include professional and citizen judges' personal opinions, the number of judges who supported and opposed the ruling and the process of deliberations.
It would be out of the question for citizen judges to reveal the privacy of those involved in the incidents they are trying and the opinions of other lay judges. However, many legal experts have pointed out that it is no problem for lay judges to publicly express their own opinions and explain the process of deliberations. On the other hand, some may point to difficulties in verifying whether individual lay judges' quotation of other citizen judges and their explanation of the process of deliberations are true.
In any case, there is a need to determine if citizens' common sense is reflected in trials. It is necessary to have in-depth discussions on citizen judges' duty of confidentiality, including their burden of keeping such information secret throughout their entire lives.
There had been questions about the pros and cons of lay judges participating in the trials of sex crimes from the viewpoint of the victims' privacy. However, heavier sentences have been handed down on defendants in sex crime trials involving lay judges as they took the victims' pains seriously, sparking debate among legal professionals about sentencing.
Questions remain as to whether lay judges should participate in trials on crimes that ordinary citizens can hardly understand, such as the smuggling of stimulants for profit. The government is urged to examine problems with trials involving citizen judges, such as whether their deliberations are hasty and sloppy, before the system will be reviewed in three years time.
The lay judge system will be fully tested when citizen judges try cases in which the death penalty is demanded for the defendants and in which the defendants plead not guilty. Further attention should be paid to the mental anguish and other burdens of citizen judges.
(Mainichi Japan) November 25, 2009