Institute calls for appeals courts to respect lay judge decisions

Under the lay judge system that debuts next May in district court trials, an appeals court "should respect, wherever possible, a lower court decision" that reflects citizens' views and social standards, a Supreme Court-related institute said in a report released Tuesday.

The Legal Training and Research Institute said an appeals court, where only professional judges will continue trying cases, should focus on reviewing whether the district court's verdict was appropriate, instead of looking at all the evidence from scratch.

Under the new system, six citizens and three professional judges will try serious criminal cases to decide if a defendant is guilty and hand down a sentence, with the verdict being reached by a majority vote among the nine participants.

Lower court sentences should be respected except in cases "where it is obvious that they were extraordinarily unreasonable," stresses the report, compiled by a team comprising professional judges and college professors. It only calls for "serious consideration" when the district and high courts split over capital punishment or life imprisonment.

While some law professionals commended the report, Kiichi Nishino, a former judge and professor at Niigata Law School, expressed wariness, saying, "I got the impression that we are going to back away from the principle that a trial should be a place where the truth is discovered and must be objectively accurate."

The report also recommends that psychiatrists stick to giving medical opinions, including if a defendant has a disorder and to what degree, and avoid offering opinions that could directly lead to a conclusion that a defendant is culpable.