Defendant pleads guilty in Japan`s 2nd lay judge trial

SAITAMA, Japan, Aug. 10 Kyodo -
The defendant pleaded guilty Monday to a charge of attempted murder as Japan's
second trial under the new system involving citizen judges opened at the
Saitama District Court, after the first such trial last week in Tokyo.
A case of attempted murder is being tried this time. The first case, involving
murder, yielded a relatively harsh punishment of 15 years in prison for the
defendant at the end of a four-day trial at the Tokyo District Court, in which
six lay judges sat with three professional judges.
Shigeyuki Miyake, 35, a demolition worker, is charged with attempting to kill
an unemployed male acquaintance, also 35, in May in Sayama, Saitama Prefecture,
by stabbing him with a kitchen knife.
In the first hearing of his three-day trial, Miyake told the court, ''There is
no mistake'' in the content of the indictment.
The stabbed man also appeared before the bench as a witness, giving lay judges
the first chance under the new trial system inaugurated in May to question and
hear from a crime victim.
''I was scared when I was stabbed and thought I would be dead,'' said the man,
whose injuries took about a month to heal.
Unlike the silence among lay judges on the first day of the first trial last
week, four of the six lay judges posed questions during the hearing on the
second case, asking the victim about such details as his scuffle with the
attacker.
Miyake's defense asked for a suspended sentence, saying the defendant turned
himself in to investigators after the crime.
Both the prosecution and defense agree that Miyake turned himself in to police
after the stabbing, so attention is being given to how the lay judge system
will work in reducing the sentence to take his surrender into account,
observers say.
Before the start of the hearing in the afternoon, the Saitama court selected
six lay judges -- all men -- and four supplementary ones -- three men and a
woman -- from the 41 candidates who turned up out of the 44 summoned.
The 44 were chosen from 90 initial candidates selected by lot after excluding
those with acceptable reasons to decline serving.
The court, presided over by Judge Makoto Tamura, said it initially planned to
have only two supplementary lay judges but doubled the number to four in view
of unstable weather due to an approaching typhoon.
While murder carries a sentence of at least five years in jail and up to life
imprisonment or death under the Criminal Code, the penalty for attempted murder
can be reduced depending on such factors as the severity of the victim's
wounds.
==Kyodo