일본 재판원제도와 항소심

Criminal Lay Judge Trial and Appellate System in Japan*

The appeal against the decision by lay judge Trial is contained in a large number of issues raised in the process of introducing the Criminal lay judge system in Japan. The previous provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law related to the appeal remain in place even since the system was introduced. The opinions are common that the main role of second instance courts is, not fact-finding, just reviewing original trials or at least needed to be more changed to so. According to the current status of appeals in Japan since the introduction of the court case, the appeal rate itself does not seem to have changed significantly. However, as in the case of Civil participatory trial in Korea, the rate of annulling original trials is lower than the existing one. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of Japan has made noticeable decision in 2012 regarding a second-instance court s overturning the first-instance acquittal on the first trial. According to the Supreme Court, it is necessary for the appellate court, in order to overturn the fact-finding of original trial, to specifically indicate that it is unreasonable in light of logical and empirical rules. The Supreme Court declared that such a necessity is more strongly requested, especially if the first trial was Criminal Lay Judge Trial based on the principle of complete court-oriented trials. Supreme Court of Korea has already made a meaningful declaration in 2012 in which the purpose of civil participatory trial and particularly the conditions in order for second-instance courts to overturn acquittal have been discussed in detail.