Citizens' panels may be given total power to indict suspects.

TOKYO, April 11 Kyodo

The government's Judicial Reform Council is mulling a plan to grant complete decision-making powers to citizens' panels over whether suspects should be indicted, council members said Tuesday.

The decision, if taken, will break the monopoly on such decisions by public prosecutors, the members said.

The move is part of the government's effort to involve the public in the nation's judicial system.

The 13-member council, chaired by Koji Sato, professor at Kinki University in Osaka Prefecture, is considering including the decision in a final report in June on reforming the nation's judicial system.

The 11-member panels are independent bodies which deliberate whether or not to indict suspects, but their decisions are not binding. Prosecutors are not obliged to follow them and in fact reverse 80% of their decisions to indict suspects.

The panels are established at each district court and their local chapters. Members are elected from among eligible voters.

During the meeting, legal experts and prosecutors proposed that the panels' powers be strengthened due to concerns about prosecutors acting in a self-regarding manner, such as a former Fukuoka prosecutor who allegedly leaked investigative information to a judge about an investigation of the judge's wife.

Eiju Yamashita, former deputy head of the Fukuoka District Public Prosecutors Office, allegedly warned Ryuichi Furukawa, a judge at the Fukuoka High Court, about the imminent arrest of his wife.

The wife was arrested Jan. 31 on suspicion of making threats against another woman over a man she had become acquainted with through a dating service.