"The ruling was the first under the new Japanese jury system, a major overhaul of the country’s legal framework aimed at speeding up trials and offering greater transparency.
The system pairs six citizens with three professional judges, and the nine together decide both guilt and sentencing. All nine are considered judges. Until now, all trials were heard only by professional judges."
I don’t like it for the US, though I think for Japan it is an improvement over their old system.
Assuming we are talking criminal trials only (my view on civil jury trials is a little tainted), I can see the judges essentially dominating the situation - the citizens become just window dressing. And that takes away from the central role of the jury - the idea of guilt determination by one’s peers.
It would probably eliminate jury nullification in the US, which would be a good or bad thing depending on your point of view.
It’s not unlike the situation they have in in some European countries. The typical U.S. criticism (which I share) is that identified above – if you really think the views of the man on the street are valuable, you elide them when he deliberates in the same room as the Authority, because the jurors are naturally going to defer to someone they see as expert in the field, while the judges are going to to naturally steer the decision along a path of legal reasoning, instead of common reasoning.
–Cliffy
I think it has some interesting advantages, like actually having someone with thorough legal knowledge in the room deliberating. Moreover, in the case of a less competent or overly deceitful lawyer on either side, a judge may be able to bring up previous decisions that are related or dispute relations that one might have tried to create and weren’t adequately countered by the opposing attorney. However, I think it ultimately has the pitfall that has already been stated. I just can’t see human nature not generally defering to the obvious expert in the room. Moreover, I think the concept of a jury of your peers is important, whereas a judge is a somewhat public figure. What happens to a judge’s career if a controversial decision gets handed down?
Of course, I think the main advantages of having a judge deliberating with the jury don’t outweigh the disadvantages simply because that’s the responsibility of the prosecution and defense, to make sure that the jury has the appropriate understanding of the facts and how the laws apply.
And really, while transparency and speed may be good things, I think doing our best to ensure equity is more important. I’d rather see a trial take 6 months and be reasonably sure that it was equitable than see the same case tried in a couple weeks and have that nagging doubt that it wasn’t. Otherwise, it would seem to undermine the very purpose of the justice system.
Aren’t those both things the jury is specifically not supposed to do? As in their role is to consider the facts of the case based on what was presented in court?
Here’s my take on juries vs. judges. Judges makes a career out of judging, and typically hear thousands of cases in a lifetime. Hence most judges will end up with a worldview shaped largely inside the courtroom. They’ll no longer see each case as a major event that can shape the life of an individual. Instead, each case just becomes normal, daily business, and they treat it as such.
The purpose of a jury is to bring in a perspective from outside the legal world. Jurors spend most of their lives on the outside, and only sit in the courtroom for long enough to hear the case. Hence they’re more aware of the role that courts and trials play in relationship to society at large. They understand that the decision they’re making deals with a unique individual, and hence won’t treat it as merely ordinary business.
That’s the theory anyway. Obviously it’s not perfectly accurate in every case.
I agree with all this.
As an American I’ve long been torn when it comes to the jury system. I think that for criminal trials often times juries are responsible for great miscarriages of justice–either in improperly convicting or improperly acquitting a person.
At the same time, I think juries are an important sort of counterbalance to our legal system which is mostly dominated and ran by career attorneys.
You think it’s possible to get two judges, much less three, to agree on something?
BWA HA HA HA HA…
Um, have you never heard of “black robe fever”, also known as “black robe disease”, “black robe syndrome”, or “black-robe-itis”? The primary symptom is the firm belief of the afflicted person that he is smarter than everyone else and empowered to act upon that wisdom.
This.
My only brush with the criminal law was when I was stopped for a seat belt violation (my passenger was not buckled up) and the cop found out that I had lived in the state for 44 days, but still had my registration and insurance in the state I had moved from. Basically a driving while brown situation. The cop even said “You people come to this country and don’t think you need to follow the law.”
I was arrested, spent the night in jail and charged with driving without insurance, which had a mandatory one year license suspension. My lawyer told me that unless the charges were dropped or plea bargained down to something lower (which it was eventually) we should go for a jury trial, because a judge would simply hand down a conviction and suspension, while I would have a 99% chance of an acquittal with the jury, who would recognize the situation for what it was. The judge being a former prosecutor (as are most judges) saw things in a very black and white way.
I also agree. When I was on a criminal jury, even for a reasonably minor charge, every jury member treated the situation very seriously. Having no one but ourselves to turn to made us consider the issue a lot more rigorously. I can imagine some people in the proposed system tuning out and deciding to go with whatever the judge says. Others might decide to dispute what the judge says. And would judges lose face if they get outvoted by civilians?
I wonder how this is going to work in Japan. Who is going to stand up against such an authority figure as a judge. It would be impolite!
My complaint with the current jury system is similar, in that on the juries I’ve been on one of the “peers” sets himself up as the expert, gets himself appointed as foreman, plays junior-mod to the the proceedings, and will not give up until the jury votes his way or hangs. Thus the 12 person panel devolves to a one person panel with 11 possible hanging votes. My own preference would be to have the jury vote after closing arguments, without meeting. That way every vote counts equally. Of course, instead of 12 to convict you might need say 10.
Vermont already does something similar to this, although only in civil cases: Side judge - Wikipedia
I would have no particular objection to the Japanese system being tried here in a state or two to see how it worked. However, in my experience the American jury system works pretty well, for all its faults, and those called as jurors conscientiously do their level best to see that justice is done. Juries have long been, and I believe still remain, a bulwark of liberty and the rule of law, and are, as Churchill said of democracy, “the worst system, except for all the others that have been tried.” I guess I’m just not convinced that we need to try the Japanese system.
This is a wonderful short essay by G.K. Chesterton on the value of the jury system; the last three paragraphs are particularly good: http://chesterton.org/gkc/essayist/12men.html