判決文はどう変わったか . 裁判員制度以前と以後(その1)

The lay judge system was introduced into Japanese district courts in May 2009. Since then, lay judges and professional judges work together on serious criminal trials. In the end they must conclude each trial with a verdict. Such verdicts are often full of legal jargon and have their own style. It has been suggested that the verdict should be much more comprehensible to both lay judges and the general public. This paper examines whether verdicts decided by the lay judge system are different from verdicts written solely by professional judges in criminal trials before May 2009. We found that both the length of time and the wording to arrive at the average decision has become shorter. It was also found that each sentence in the verdict contains fewer words than before. Words that appear frequently tend to be simple, easy, and general. However, the frequency of kanji words has not changed significantly. Archaic words that are difficult to comprehend by lay people are still used. The ratios of kanji words, hiragana words, katakana words, and mixed words have remained almost the same as before the introduction of the new lay judge system. Characteristic words in a verdict have not changed to this day. The above observations are only a part of the ongoing research being done, and further investigations are necessary for revising the lay judge system