Empirical study about the diaparity in sentencing of lay judge trial

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26330179
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Cognitive science
• Research Institution: Ritsumeikan University (2016); Hokkaido University (2014-2015)
• Principal Investigator: YAMASAKI Yuko 立命館大学, 立命館グローバル・イノベーション研究機構, 研究員 (20507149)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 量刑格差 / 判例分析 / 模擬裁判 / 共感性 / 個人特性 / 犯情 / 犯意

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We conducted three studies, including an analysis of judicial precedent and a mock trial experiment, to assess what factors are associated with sentencing disparity.
Results of the judicial precedent analysis suggested that lay judge’s bias towards either the victim or the defendant may contribute to the penalty disparity（Study 1）. Results of a mock trial experiment showed that the participants being able to relate to the defendant and the situation and that the sympathy affects sentencing. The disparity in sentencing may be caused by the deflection of the personality of citizen judges（Study 2）. Further the results of another experiment suggested that the method used to decide the outline of assessment of a case in ‘criminal circumstances’, and determine the appropriate punishment considering ‘the general circumstances’ could reduce the disparity in sentencing（Study 3）.

Free Research Field

裁判心理学