Japan considers one year limit on anti-retrial appeal proceedings
The Japanese government is considering imposing a one-year limit on court proceedings that will be initiated by prosecutors' appeal against a retrial ruling, sources said Wednesday.The government, which is working on an amendment bill to the Code of Criminal Procedure to reform the country's time-consuming retrial system, plans to shorten the court proceedings while keeping intact the prosecution's much-criticized right to appeal a court decision to reopen a trial, according to details of a modified draft bill drawn up by the Justice Ministry.Changing none of the main provisions in the original draft, the ministry attached additional clauses stipulating nine points of note, with one clause prohibiting prosecutors from filing anti-retrial appeals without "sufficient reasons" and another requesting court efforts to conclude appeal proceedings "within a year."A separate clause says that the number of and reasons for appeals lodged by prosecutors will be disclosed along with the number of retrial petitions rejected in the pretrial screening process, a move that is expected to help track how the revised law is implemented. The draft calls for reviewing the state of the law's application five years after it goes into force and taking "necessary measures."The tweaked draft bill will soon be shown to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. But it cannot gain LDP approval easily as many party lawmakers are demanding that prosecutors be completely banned from challenging retrial decisions, critics said.
