earticle

영어

The system of civil participation in criminal trials has been introduced and implemented by allowing common citizens to take part in the process of criminal judgment with a view to promote trust in and democratic transparency of the judicial procedures. As it was the first ever epoch-making measure in Korea to introduce such system in which public participation in judicial process is permitted, it was termed as "democratization of judicial administration" and thus much was expected to come therefrom. In fact, it should be said of the results from its implementation that nothing much could be acquired from the system as was anticipated in the beginning. One of the reasons for such dissatisfactory outcomes is because it is too abstract and comprehensive to exclude any one from participating in the procedure, leading to the fear that the court may still exercise overwhelming control over the procedure. It is encouraging, however, to note that there is positive appraisal about the system since citizens' participation in the judicial procedure can provide them with chances to learn about democracy and can prevent such critical issues as 'preferential treatment for ex-judges or -prosecutors' and 'one law for the rich, another for the poor' to occur completely. Nevertheless, there still remain such issues to be solved, for instance, as low rate of application for the system and high rate of withdrawal and exclusion because the verdict of jurors is far from being recognized as effective sentence. Moreover, sufficient inquiry into a case can not be made and verdict is predictable because hearings for fact-finding and question of law are not done clearly separated. Besides, there are also a lot more questions at issue that notice for the first instance date is usually given very imminently, jurors rarely attend trials, appeal rate is high, sexual crime victims' claim is not duly represented, etc. It is therefore suggested to impart binding force to the verdict of jurors participating in the civil trials and to specify the otherwise vague legal provisions for them. It is further solicited to assess culpability by separating hearings for fact-finding and question of law from each other in an effort to draw consent of defendants to the verdict. Besides, it is recommended to make known the significance as well importance of the system of civil participation in trials by reinforcing civil law education at every level of schools and lifelong educational institutes for the youths and adults as resources for potential jurors in the future.