The court gravely weighed the fact that two junior high school students lost their lives. The ruling indicates the lay judges closely and prudently examined the evidence.
The Osaka District Court has handed down the death sentence to Koji Yamada, who had been charged with murder over the killing of two first-year junior high school students, a boy and a girl, in Neyagawa, Osaka Prefecture. Yamada's lawyers have appealed the ruling.
The defendant denied murdering the two students, and there was no direct evidence such as eyewitness testimony. Would the court recognize the students had been murdered? Should the death sentence be chosen as the punishment? The lay judges were forced to decide based on circumstantial evidence. They held many deliberations during the month after the trial concluded. This shows they made their decision at the end of exhaustive discussions.
The defense team had argued that the boy died from an illness and that Yamada therefore was innocent.
The ruling determined, based on testimony from forensic scientists, that Yamada had throttled the boy and suffocated him. The boy's mother said he had no health problems, and the court stated that it was "inconceivable" that he would suddenly die.
Whether the girl had been strangled was not in dispute, so a central dispute was whether Yamada had intentionally killed her. The ruling, which concluded "there was a clear intent to kill because [strangulation] required applying pressure to her neck for several minutes," is reasonable.
The ruling can be described as the result of carefully considering the testimony in a case in which the motive for murder was not necessarily clear.
Speed up pretrial procedures
In past cases, the Supreme Court has shown the conditions that should be considered when choosing whether to hand down the death penalty include the brutality of the crime and the number of victims. Premeditation is also an important element, but in this case, the death sentence was handed down even though the court did not find that the killings had been planned.
The ruling judged that the defendant, who took the life of one young person and then another, showed a "remarkable level of disregard for the value of life" and the case was "unparalleled." This seems to have reflected the common sentiment of the lay judges.
Nine hearings were held over the three weeks from the trial's opening until its conclusion. A trial for an incident in which there were multiple victims and the defendant denies the charges can involve many pieces of evidence and easily become protracted. All things considered, this case was relatively swift.
The pretrial conference procedure is one factor that can be credited for this. Under this system, the judge, prosecutors and defense lawyers discuss in advance the points of contention and evidence. In this case, such discussions were held 33 times over about two years. It seems that thorough preparations, such as whittling down the key points of dispute, were made ahead of the trial.
However, there also has been criticism that the pretrial conference procedure took too long.
Looking at this system overall, in 2009, when lay judge trials started in Japan, the average length of pretrial conference procedures was 2.8 months. In 2017, this figure had grown to 8.3 months. The lengthening of this period could bring the adverse effect of the memories of defendants and witnesses fading away.
Last month, the Supreme Court compiled a report that urged the length of pretrial conference procedures be shortened. Judges must play the difficult role of ensuring efficient trial preparations and realizing prompt and thorough trials.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Dec. 21, 2018)
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