Effect of the judicial instruction based on the theoretical explanation of evidence law on the jurors reasoning from the pretrial publicity information

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  • 公判前の事件報道に対して理論的根拠を含む裁判官説示が与える影響
  • コウハン マエ ノ ジケン ホウドウ ニ タイシテ リロンテキ コンキョ オ フクム サイバンカン セツジ ガ アタエル エイキョウ

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Abstract

In Japan, there is no restriction on crime reporting by the media from the perspective of the right to free expression. However, Fuchino (2007) pointed out that some content of Japanese pretrial publicity (PTP) leads to prejudice against the defendant, and that it also provides the criminal trials of injustice by prejudiced jurors. The Japanese Justice Ministry (2009) suggested that professional judges instruct the jurors to ignore inadmissible information. Thus, they claimed that the media regulation is not necessary about this problem. This study examined the effect of the professional judge's instruction (JI) that ignores the PTP in criminal cases in which citizens' act as jurors. We compared two types of JI. The first instruction included the theoretical explanation of evidence law that inadmissible evidence should be ignored, and the second instruction did not include the detail of evidence law, it was only instructed to ignore the inadmissible evidences. In experiment 1, we compared the two types of PTP that Fuchino (2007) discussed, the inadmissible confession and the crime record of the defendant. The results showed that the both JI did not have the effect of ignoring the PTP of the inadmissible confession. Experiment 2 examined the effect of the JI on the popular representation in the newspaper media. The results showed that the JI that included an explanation of evidence law led jurors to a not guilty judgment on this type of JI.

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