Empirical Study of the Process about Recognition and Decision Making of Lay Judges and Professional Judges in Criminal Trial

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Purpose of this project is to study Saibanin System empirically so that research for Japanese citizen and experiment based on this data was held. At first, the research for Japanese citizen was to clarify what was the general hardship for Japanese citizen about lay participation in Japanese criminal trial. According to the result, the most important hardship was the anxiety for professional legal aspect. Especially, most citizens felt that they did not have much knowledge about judicial process or law, and this feeling was one of the most influential factors for the hardship. Following this result, this project held the experiment to study how was instruction, opening statement and note taking supportive for lay person and how was influenced the different volume of information between lay people and judges to the deliberation and function of new mixed court. Now, data is on consideration. The research about movement of several new tests about jury trial in United States was also tried in parallel with this experiment. The article about American jury trial was published. Instruction or note taking was not always significantly helpful for lay persons to understand the case, but the useful value has been gradually analyzed. Furthermore, the comparison between legal knowledge and psychological knowledge or influence of authoritarianism toward the attitude of participation as lay judge was studied in the research for Japanese citizen. Authoritarianism was not always useful for the positiveness of lay participation and psychological knowledge was not also always more helpful than legal knowledge.