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To Plea Or Not To Plea: The Benefits Of Establishing An Institutionalized Plea Bargaining System In Japan, Priyanka Prakash
To Plea Or Not To Plea: The Benefits Of Establishing An Institutionalized Plea Bargaining System In Japan, Priyanka Prakash
Washington International Law Journal
Plea bargaining, the practice that permits the prosecution and defense to negotiate reduced charges or a lighter sentence in exchange for the defendant’s guilty plea, is a bedrock component of the criminal justice system in many nations. The Japanese legal community, however, has resisted introducing plea bargaining into Japan’s legal system. From 2001 to 2004, the Japanese legislature passed over twenty reform laws to prepare the country’s criminal justice system for the demands of the twenty-first century, but provisions for plea bargaining were conspicuously absent from the reform package. This is largely because the Japanese legal community views plea bargaining …
Death Penalty Sentencing In Japan Under The Lay Assessor System: Avoiding The Avoidable Through Unanimity, Elizabeth M. Sher
Death Penalty Sentencing In Japan Under The Lay Assessor System: Avoiding The Avoidable Through Unanimity, Elizabeth M. Sher
Washington International Law Journal
The Lay Assessor Act of 2004 mandated the creation of a mixed lay judge system, called the saibanin seido. Under this new system, jurors, or lay judges, sit with professional judges to decide the fate of criminal defendants. The Lay Assessor Act requires lay judges to decide both the verdict and sentencing of defendants in the same sitting. The verdict and sentence require support from a majority of the jurors and must include one professional judge on the panel. For certain crimes in Japan, the death penalty is one possible sentence. Under the saibanin seido system, for the first …
Initial Research On The Malfunctions Of The Criminal Process, Chen Ruihua, Timothy Webster
Initial Research On The Malfunctions Of The Criminal Process, Chen Ruihua, Timothy Webster
Washington International Law Journal
In recent years, as China’s legislature has placed the amendment of the Criminal Procedure Law on its legislative plan, more and more legal scholars are paying attention to the problem. Legal academics have produced a series of theses and books, and qualified scholars have even organized experts’ drafts of the Criminal Procedure Law, offering comprehensive and systematic theoretical works on how to revise the law. I participated in scholarly activities organized by the Criminal Affairs Committee of the All China Lawyers Federation, and drafted the first lawyers’ edition of the revised Criminal Procedure Law. Thus, the next revision of the …
Addressing The Overrepresentation Of The Maori In New Zealand's Criminal Justice System At The Sentencing Stage: How Australia Can Provide A Model For Change, Joanna Hess
Washington International Law Journal
New Zealand’s 2002 Sentencing Act provides several ways a sentencing court may take an offender’s cultural or ethnic background into account. Given the disproportionate rate of recidivism among New Zealand’s indigenous Maori offenders and international and domestic concerns regarding this problem, the Act’s provisions offer one method for addressing and mitigating this issue. However, these sentencing provisions remain largely unknown or underused. This comment argues that in order to tackle these concerns, left unaddressed by the current Sentencing Act, New Zealand should restructure its sentencing provisions to follow the legislative model that is developing in Australian states, particularly the model …