The prolonged trial of former Democratic Party of Japan President Ichiro Ozawa marked the first time a Diet member has been tried after being subjected to mandatory indictment by a panel of ordinary citizens who received authorization to review a case prosecutors gave up on.
Legal experts now are split about whether the inquest committee, as the citizen panel is known, can play fairly. The case was taken up even though prosecutors concluded they didn't have enough evidence to convict Ozawa.
Those who praise the mandatory indictment system say the revised Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution system, introduced in 2009, has allowed the public to prevail on the courts to judge people's guilt or innocence, instead of leaving them in the hands of shadowy prosecutors, who were the only ones with such authority and tended to make their decisions behind closed doors.
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