open access

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/44699

Do tribunal decisions and/or lay judges' personal decisions on admissibility of evidence affect their conviction rates?

日本語

mixed tribunal

2005

龍谷大学矯正・保護研究センター

Corrections and Rehabilitation Research Center (CRRC) Journal

2

120-139

A partial amendment of the Criminal Procedure Act was delivered in 2004. The law entitles a judge to decide admissibility/inadmissibility of evidence in a pretrial procedure. Because the procedure is closed to lay judges in the future mixed tribunals, some argue that transparency of the procedure might be jeopardized. However, others argue that the procedure is in the interest of justice because lay judges might be easily biased if they were exposed to prosecuting but possibly inadmissible evidence in the court. In this study, we investigated whether or not lay judges' conviction rate was affected by (1) their being exposed to such evidence, (2) their personal decisions on admissibility/inadmissibility of the evidence, and (3) the tribunal decisions on admissibility/inadmissibility of the evidence, Results showed that exposing lay judges to possibly inadmissible evidence did not necessarily raise the conviction rate. Furthermore, when the evidence was decided inadmissible by the tribunal decision, lay judges could ignore the evidence. Desirable procedures were discussed.

学術雑誌論文

Version of Record

1349-3167