NCJ Number
89363
Journal
Revue internationale de criminologie et de police technique Volume: 35 Issue: 2 Dated: (April-June 1982) Pages: 185-192
Date Published
1982
Length
8 pages
Annotation
The principle of citizen participation in criminal justice has been applied in Poland since 1949 in tribunals of the first instance using panels ordinarily composed of a professional judge and two lay assessors in open hearings.
Abstract
People's councils elect the assessors for 4 years from candidates selected from assemblies of local representatives of the people. The assessors are intended to bring democracy and common life experience, as well as the perspectives of different walks of life into criminal justice decisionmaking. In contrast to the role of buorgeois juries, assessors participate in all aspects of judicial decisionmaking, including sentencing. While Western systems reserve interpretation of the law, e.g., determination of penalties prescribed in the criminal codes, as the purview of professionals skilled in legal matters, Polish law is deemed understandable to the ordinary citizen without recourse to intermediary experts. A survey of Polish judges revealed that they considered the influence of assessors' judgments important in about 39 percent of the cases. The system, however, needs to be expanded and improved. Current practices are inadequate in that too much power is left to the president of the tribunal of first instance to remove certain cases from hearings before lay assessors, and courts of second instance retain broad authority to revise and reverse initial decisions made by judicial panels with lay participants. Recommendations for improvement relate to the selection of better motivated and socially involved assessors and to more accepting attitudes of judges toward lay assessors. A total of 12 footnotes are provided.