일본의 책임능력 판단 구조 및 기준에 관하여

After ‘2016 Gangnam Station murder case’ and ‘2018 Gangseo-gu PC bang murder case,’ interest in offenders with mental disorders and their criminal punishment surged in Korean society. This interest, however, c onverged into the negative assessment of provisions for mitigating or e xempting the punishment of mentally disordered offenders. Actually, su ch awareness of citizens and claim for legal amendment had great effec ts on the amendment of the Criminal Act. The amended Criminal Act d ated December 18, 2018 altered the provisions of mitigation or exempti on for feeble-minded persons from imperative provisions to dispositive provisions, thereby allowing the judge to apply flexibly the mitigation o f punishment according to the judge’s discretion and the severity of a c ase, while it does not deny the principle of criminal responsibility. This made the judge’s judgment about the defendant’s sanity have greater ef fects on the severity of punishment. In October 2023, the Tokyo District Court of Japan declared not guilty an American man who had been charged with the killing of his wife dur ing divorce settlement at the court. At this trial, the American man’s s anity was at issue. The defence claimed that the defendant had been n on compos mentis due to schizophrenia and hallucination, whereas the p rosecutors sought a 22-year sentence, claiming that the defendant was fully sane. As for the court, it ruled the defendant not guilty, acknowle dging that the defendant was insane. It is a remarkable case in that de spite the serious result of the victim’s death, the court ruled the defen dant not guilty for the reason that the defendant lacked sanity. In the c ase of South Korea, given very rare judgments of ‘not guilty’ for the re ason of the defendant’s insanity, it is necessary to review the process of negating the defendant’s sanity in the above Japanese precedent. He nce, this paper examined the Japanese trial’s criteria and methods for j udgment of sanity, which became the theoretical basis of the relevant p recedent, and then derived implications.