Citizens are to join professional judges in judging serious criminal cases. Get ready for blood.

A collection of legal “galacticos” graced the halls of the FCCJ on June 16 for a discussion about the launch of the lay judge system, which started in May. Former Supreme Court Judge Kunio Hamada, Japan Federation of Bar Associations President Makoto Miyazaki and professor Satoru Shinomiya of Kokugakuin University’s law school addressed the lunchtime crowd.

The facts of the change are simple. For serious cases, mainly involving fatalities, six lay persons drawn at random from the electoral register will join three professional judges. What won’t be changed is the police’s power to detain suspects without a lawyer for up to a month, which many critics believes leads to coerced confessions, and hence Japan’s 99 percent conviction rate.

The panelists voiced the hope that the presence of amateurs will end the cosy relationship between police and prosecutors and that fresh eyes will identify coerced confessions and force the professionals to justify their decisions. After conferring with the professionals (the main difference between Japan’s new system and a wholly independent jury system), lay judges will vote on the sentencing, but at least one professional judge must join them.

The move signals the politicization of crime in Japan, just as has occurred in the U.K. and the U.S. This may not be a good thing. Sentences in Britain and the States have become increasingly punitive in the past few decades, as governments have heeded calls from an angry public. British and American prison populations have rocketed, although crime has not come down. Lay judges will not be softer than the professionals when it comes to sentencing.

Ironically, the distinguishing mark of the postwar Japanese legal system is its leniency, the panelists claimed. Japan’s incarceration rate is low by U.S./U.K. standards, even if the conviction rate is high. The statistics show that in terms of sentencing, leniency is the flip side of coercion (if any) during detainment.

But, according to the panel, criminals have learned that if they don’t confess, they don’t get convicted. The lack of confessions leads to more coercive techniques and/or fewer charges being brought – since the authorities rarely carry out wiretaps, plea bargains or sting operations. Plea-bargaining is generally not considered justice in Japan.

With confessions becoming rarer, one wonders whether lay judges have been brought in to get public sanction for even harsher methods of interrogation. That suspicion will only be removed when the authorities start wielding alternative crime-solving techniques. ❶