Two recent high-profile exonerations have reignited calls by defense lawyers to require the full disclosure of evidence, and to let verdicts handed down by lay judges stand.
The lawyers for Nepalese Govinda Prasad Mainali, who on Nov. 7 was finally exonerated in absentia of a 1997 robbery-murder, went a step further and slammed the Japanese practice of allowing prosecutors to appeal acquittals — something other countries ban as double jeopardy.
Because lay judges are now serving as de facto jurors in trials for serious crimes, attempts to appeal any acquittal they declare — even if they work with professional judges and are only exposed to whatever evidence both sides agree to submit — could undermine their significance.
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