A Brief Review of the New Criminal Jury Trial System in Korea

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 세계헌법학회한국학회
· 수록지 정보 : 세계헌법연구 / 16권 / 3호 / 465 ~ 484페이지
· 저자명 : 김선화

초록

The Lay Participation in Criminal Proceeding Act of 2007 introduced the modified Jury Trial System. It is the first time in history for Korea to accept the jury trial system. The jury trial system has been a unique feature of the Anglo-American judicial system. The idea that public participation in the judicial process is a democratic feature is unfamiliar in the Asian tradition. But recently many Asian countries such as Japan and Korea have come to consider the jury trial as an important feature of the democratic judiciary to strengthen the public trust in the judiciary.
We decided to introduce lay participation in criminal trial whose verdict has only unbinding effect. For there have been various worries for that inexperienced judicial system, they decided to give small position to the jury at first.
Until now, the jury trial seems to be a success. The jury have done good job. The traditionally rigid court room becomes the place which makes the people understand and form legal order for themselves. We might expect the jury trail system would achieve the judicial democratization. But it is experimental period and we have time to correct defects of the new system.
The most important problem in the new Jury system is about the unbinding effect of the verdict. The binding effect of the verdict is the core feature of jury trial. The reason of unbinding effect of the verdict is to escape the doubt of the unconstitutionality as seen above. Before the enactment of it, the discussion over the constitutionality of the jury trial seemed to be settled. There are few reasons to give the unbinding effect to the verdict of the jury.
The significance of jury system is that it would bring the higher level democratization to Korean society.

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