Japan Govt Presents Draft of Retrial System Revision

Tokyo, Dec. 16 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Justice Ministry presented a draft plan to revise the retrial system at a meeting of a subgroup of the Legislative Council on Tuesday.

The ministry included two options on each of the major topics where there are major disagreements in the council, such as the scope of evidence disclosure in a retrial request hearing and the prohibition of appeals by prosecutors against a court decision to start a retrial.

Meanwhile, the ministry made concrete proposals on procedural provisions, over which a broad consensus had been built.

It has been effectively decided that provisions be established to enable courts to order prosecutors to submit evidence they hold after considering the necessity and possible adverse effects from submission.

But on the scope of evidence disclosure, the ministry presented the options of limiting it to proof directly related to the reason for a retrial request and accepting a wider range of evidence.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]