Published 2010-12-01
“…In June-Jul 2010, lay judge panels handed down three complete or partial acquittals in cases involving complex evidence and defendants who denied guilt, causing some prosecutors to contend that the new system makes it "harder and harder to persuade lay judges that defendants are guilty"-despite the fact that these not-guilty verdicts were the first that lay judges had rendered in more than 600
trials. In September, a lay judge panel in
Tokyo evaluated the contradictory claims of medical experts and endured two weeks of frenzied media coverage before convicting actor Oshio Manabu and sentencing him to two-and-one-half years in prison for failing to call an ambulance to aid Tanaka Kaori, who died of an overdose of Ecstasy (MDMA) that Oshio had given her when they met to have sex in a Roppongi apartment (prosecutors wanted a six-year sentence). …”
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