Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Inspired by Matthew Palmer's writings (1, 2) on his experiences about the Australian judicial system, I decided to write a series of essays on the Finnish legal system, mostly to contrast it with the universally familiar United State system (even if that universal familiarity is a little skewed by generally having been obtained from dramatizations and not actual court practice). I will concentrate on criminal cases.
I will write based on my personal experience as a part of the judicial system, and I will be supplementing the experience with my personal research into law. I am not legally trained, but I have read a fair bit of law and related literature.
I am a lay judge in the Jyväskylä District court. I will explain the significance of that later, but I hope it suffices to say, here, that I have sat on the bench, as part of four-judge panels, since March this year, in ten sessions each a day long, and each containing at least two, usually four or five criminal cases.
Some highlights:
- There are no plea bargains. With some minor exceptions, every criminal case is tried in a full court session.
- There is no jury. Criminal cases are tried as a rule by a panel of four judges, of which one is legally trained and three are lay judges, each having an equal vote.
- The main hearing in a Finnish criminal trial (November 16, 2005)
- The Finnish lay judge system (November 16, 2005)
A criminal case begins when the police becomes aware of a possible crime. If there is reason to suspect that a crime has been committed, the police conducts a so-called preliminary investigation, the purpose of which is to turn up all evidence related to the suspected criminal act, including trying to establish the identity of the perpetrator. A completed preliminary investigation is turned over to a prosecutor.
The prosecutor makes the first legal evaluation of the case based on the results of the preliminary investigation. The prosecutor can decide that there is no case, or that the likely crime is minor enough that it is not worth prosecution (usually in these cases, the injured party has been compensated by the perpetrator). The injured party may then press charges themselves; otherwise the case is closed should either of these happen. If the prosecutor determines that there is probable cause to believe that the suspect did in fact commit the crime in question, he or she is legally required to press charges.
The District Court is the first instance of the judicial system that hears the case. In complex cases, it holds a preliminary hearing where the parties (the prosecutor, the defendant, and any injured parties) determine points of dispute and agree on the sequence of evidence presentation in the main trial. This session is presided by a single legally trained judge.
The main trial is usually held in front of a four-judge panel. The presiding judge is always legally trained, and the three others are lay judges. In complex cases, the panel consists often of five or six judges, containing either and additional legally trained judge, or an additional lay judge, or both.
I will write a separate essay, probably a dramatized presentation of a fictional case, on the content of the main trial. I'll just note that most cases require from half an hour to two hours for the main trial. The longest trial I have been part of took less than a day. Complicated matters (complex murder cases, many white-collar cases) can, of course, create long trials.
At the conclusion of the main trial, all parties and every member of the audience are removed from the courtroom, and the judge panel starts deliberating. Obviously, the legally-trained presiding judge is in primary control of the deliberation, but every judge on the panel has an equal vote in the decision. All the lay judges and the legally trained judge (or judges) are equally involved in deciding the facts of the case based on the evidence, in making the legal judgment of whether a crime has been committed, and in determining the punishment and other consequences, as appropriate. The deliberations are kept secret forever.
Finnish courts of law are entitled to free evaluation of the evidence presented. There are very few formal rules of evidence; for this reason, Finnish courtroom rarely hears the word "Objection!". The panel of the judges hear all of the evidence, and it decides for itself what part of it it believes and what it does not believe. The ultimate standard for conviction is, of course, the absence of reasonable doubt.
The presiding judge writes the opinion of the court based on the opinions of the individual members, including a statement of the reasoning used to reach the decision. In the rare case of a split decision, the presiding judge (or perhaps the other legally trained judge, if there is one) writes up also the minority opinion. If there are two tied opinions, the one favoring the defendant becomes the court opinion. In most cases, the decision, including the reasoning writeup and any minority opinion, is public.
Any party may contest the decision in part or in full, in order to seek a decision more favourable to them. Any party that intends to do that must inform the court of this intention within a week of the decision. If no party registers such an intention, the district court ruling becomes final. A party that registered the intention in time may file an appeal with the relevant Appeals Court within 30 days of the decision.
The Appeals Court is obligated to retry those parts of the case that the appeals contested, unless the appeals are clearly bogus. The Appeals Court is competent to retry even the evidence, in contrast to (my understanding of) the US Appeals Courts. There are no lay judges in Appeals Courts.
Any party may seek to contest the Appeals Court decision (or a part of it) in front of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is entitled to select the cases it hears, and it usually hears only those cases where it expects to set a precedent. If the appeal is denied, or no appeal is attempted, the Appeals Court decision becomes final. In any case, the Supreme Court decision is the final word in any criminal case, barring a very unusual case of procedural error.
In some rare cases (mainly charges of treason and the like) are tried at the Appeals Courts as the first instance. In such a case, the Supreme Court is obligated to retry the case (or a part of it) on appeal.
It should be noted that courts do not make law in Finland. The only sense a court of law is bound by the decision of another court is by the general principle of equal treatment by the courts. In other words, two essentially identical cases should be decided the same way, and similar cases should get similar decisions. The significance of a Supreme Court ruling is therefore to set a standard against which future similar cases are measured.
2005-11-15T01:53+0200 - /en/judicial/finland
Trackback url: http://antti-juhani.kaijanaho.info/blog/en/judicial/finland/intro.trackback (trackback on rikki / trackback is broken)
Re: Driving While Intoxicated – A Glimpse of Finnish Criminal Justice, Part One
A couple of things I find interesting.
First is the "I demand punishment" formula for the prosecutor. There have been many movements lately for justice to focus on protecting or bettering society, rather than punishing people. Has anybody in Finland objected to the prosecutor's formula on such grounds?
Second is examining the defendant's income. It seems awfully invasive to make public someone's finances. Are fines income-dependent or something? Could someone refuse to tell their income?
Thanks as always for the interesting posts!
- vasi, ti, 22 marras 2005 23:56
Re: Driving While Intoxicated – A Glimpse of Finnish Criminal Justice, Part One
Income information is public anyway, as individual taxation figures are public (every year the press has a field day with the new taxation information, publishing the income etc. of well known and exceptionally wealthy persons; not surprisingly every year about the same time there's a few days of public discussion of whether public taxation is a good thing or not, never leading into any changes in that system).
Fines are measured in day-fines, which I suppose is intended to cover one day's income minus mandatory expenses. The euro amount of a day-fine is calculated by taking the monthly income after taxes, subtracting 255 euros and then dividing by 60; finally for each dependent (child), three euros are subtracted. However, the minimum day-fine is six euros; there is no maximum. For the example case, the monthly net income was 500 euros; subtracting 255 gives 245 euros, which divided by 60 yields 4.08 euros, which gets upgraded to the minimum of six euros.
I believe the "I demand punishment" formula is based on the theory that the court only considers demands made by the parties (though this is a little fuzzy). I'm not aware of any controversy.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ke, 23 marras 2005 07:33
Re: Driving While Intoxicated – A Glimpse of Finnish Criminal Justice, Part One
The court will always have access to a summary of the defendant's last completed taxation, and the court will use that if the defendant does not claim that it has changed (including specifying the new income information).
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ke, 23 marras 2005 07:37
Re: Driving While Intoxicated – A Glimpse of Finnish Criminal Justice, Part One
Thanks for the explanation.
- vasi, ke, 23 marras 2005 18:50
Re: The Finnish lay judge system
I really don't see what's the point of limiting access to lay judge positions to Finnish citizens and to those over 25 year old, especially in a country where 18 is the voting age and where foreigners are allowed to vote and to be a candiadate in those municipal elections.
- Martin-Éric, to, 17 marras 2005 00:34
Re: The Finnish lay judge system
Wow, I've gotta say this sounds dangerous! I don't know if you have anti-immigrant parties in Finland, but many countries do (eg: the 'UKIP' in Britain). Could a party like that get a lay judge appointed who would almost always rule against immigrants!?
In my area, many towns don't have political parties. Do all Finnish areas have parties? If not, what do they do elsewhere?
Thanks again for the articles!
- vasi, to, 17 marras 2005 03:52
Re: The Finnish lay judge system
The "allot the seats to the parties" is a convention, it's not a legal requirement (and frankly is against the spirit of the system). As long as such a party is open about what it does, and it doesn't have majority, I would expect the other parties not to give them such access.
And yes, parties are a force locally, too (they are most of the time the national-level parties that participate in the parliament). This is because the municipal councillors are elected from a single district, the whole municipality. The d'Hondt system is used to allocate seats, and that requires some sort of party structure at every municipality.
Any judge (lay or not) allowing his or her decisions to be biased risks indictment and conviction for mishandling a public office.
(BTW, the political persuasion of lay judges is not in practice visible in courts. I know most of my fellow lay judges are active in politics, but unless I know them from elsewhere, I don't have a clue as to what their political persuasion is.)
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, to, 17 marras 2005 07:44
Re: The Finnish lay judge system
Martin, the fact that you are considered to be capable of being one decision maker amongst several thousand (or more) on a general issue like "who should be in the parliament for the next few years" at 18 doesn't have a lot of bearing on whether you'll be suitable to be one of 3 or 4 direct decision makers on the future of one particular human being.
It's going to be tricky to work out what age *is* suitable for being a lay judge, but certainly tacking a few extra years of life experience onto a judge beyond being able to vote in elections isn't a pointless exercise, to my way of thinking.
- Matt Palmer, la, 19 marras 2005 01:50
Re: The Finnish lay judge system
Matt, my only point is on equal rights for equal responsabilities.
- Martin-Éric, ti, 22 marras 2005 16:13
Re: The Finnish lay judge system
Comments to this entry close in a few hours. If you still have comments or questions, email me at antti-juhani@kaijanaho.info; I can make a new entry responding to those comments and opening a new comment thread for discussion.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ke, 23 marras 2005 19:11
Re: The main hearing in a Finnish criminal trial
That defendants are neither bound to nor expected to tell the truth, and that the decision is largely based on outside witnesses says a lot about this country's prejudicial manners. Sad.
- Martin-Éric, to, 17 marras 2005 00:49
Re: The main hearing in a Finnish criminal trial
I found it odd, too, that defendants were in no way required to tell the truth, but when I thought about it further, it really isn't that far off what happens in other jurisdictions -- everybody expects defendants to lie, as the consequences of telling "the whole truth" on the stand can be pretty severe. I'm curious to know how judges (in general) treat the statements of defendants, when there is an an explicit statement that what the defendant is saying on the stand could be 100% A-grade bulldust. Over here (.au), the jury is able to make their own judgment on the weight they give any witness' testimony, and I presume that a judge in the Finnish system could choose to give less weight to any particular witness' testimony, including that of the defendant. Does it work out in practice, then, that everyone more of less turns to their PSPs when the defendant takes the stand, since they know that they're going to give very little weight to what the defendant has to say anyway?
- Matt Palmer, la, 19 marras 2005 01:56
Re: The main hearing in a Finnish criminal trial
In general, I don't think the formal truth obligation or its lack has much importance when deciding whether a story is credible. It is very hard for me to say anything more without discussing actual cases, so I hope you'll all forgive me for this vague statement :)
Of course, perjury is a crime and one can be prosecuted for it if there is probable cause (and convicted in the absence of reasonable doubt). It is fairly rare to my knowledge, though.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, la, 19 marras 2005 23:16
Re: The main hearing in a Finnish criminal trial
Comments to this entry are closing in a couple of hours. Email me at antti-juhani@kaijanaho.info if you have comments or questions later on; I can create new posts to answer them and to allow for further debate :)
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ke, 23 marras 2005 07:34
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Interesting. The lay judges seem to form a sort of hybrid judge-jury system -- like the Anglo-American system, they are laypeople and are responsible for deciding innocence or guilt, but there isn't the same separation between the legal expert who rules on matters of law and the jury which rules on matters of fact (which witnesses are credible, what actually happened etc).
But what, in the Finnish system, corresponds to the role of the American supreme court in deciding that the legislature has overstepped its bounds (passing a law that violates the constitution or treaties that the country is bound to follow)? That is really the only sense that American courts "make law": they resolve ambiguities and the law and sometimes rule that a law is unconstitutional, or that a local government has exceeded its authority.
- Joe Buck, ti, 15 marras 2005 03:06
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
No Finnish court has authority to strike down law. Any court is obligated to ignore ordinary law that is in "obvious conflict" with the constitution, but this is in practice very rare. The constitutionality of laws is decided by a special committee of the unicameral parliament, while each bill is being processed by the parliament. Governmental authority is checked by the administrative courts that any person or entity affected by a governmental decision at any level can appeal to, if one considers the decision to be unlawful. This appeal of governmental decisions is somewhat a national sport, and occasionally people in high positions propose limiting that right due to its preceived abuse.
The lack of a constitutional court is a problem according to many Finns, myself included.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 15 marras 2005 06:37
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Thanks for the article, it's always fun to learn new things. A couple of quick questions, if you have time....
* Rules of evidence: If these rules aren't strict, how do courts deal with evidence that (for good reasons) isn't allowed in the English tradition? For example, it's not allowed in the USA for witnesses to report hearsay and opinion, to prevent bias against an unpopular party to the lawsuit. Also, evidence gathered illegally is not allowed to be considered, such as if the police broke into someone's home without a warrant.
Do Finnish courts accept this evidence equally? Do they hear the evidence, but trust the judges to give it less or no credence?
* Plea bargains: Does the Finnish system have the concept of a 'plea' at all? I know many civil law systems don't. Makes sense, in my opinion! I think the concept of a plea bargain is very silly and dangerous.
* Regular courts and administrative courts: This whole concept seems pretty strange to me. Do the two courts ever argue over jurisdiction? Eg: If an administrator uses his privileges or authority in a way that could be deemed a criminal act.
* How are judges chosen, especially lay judges?
As for constitutional courts, I like the system we have here in Canada.
In the USA, laws can only be invalidated when the Supreme Court hears a relevant case. So the government can even intentionally pass a law that is unconstitutional, and have that law be active for at least a few months or years. But in France, laws can only be invalidated when they are referred to a special constitutional court. If several years later, the law is discovered to have unintentional consequences that are unconstitutional, tant pis!
In Canada, we allow both kinds of examination of laws. The government can refer a question to the Supreme Court, to ask 'do you think this potential law is unconstitutional?'. (This decision is technically non-binding.) But the Supreme Court can also invalidate laws on appeal if they are unconstitutional, just like in the USA.
This system seems to work well for us! But we have some problems with choosing judges for the Supreme Court, so maybe one day Finland will invent an even better system. :-)
- vasi, ti, 15 marras 2005 07:42
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Some of those questions are beyond my competence. I'll have to get back to you on the rules of evidence after I've consulted the criminal judicial process book I received as a birthday present recently. In practice, the legally trained judge is primarily responsible for guinding us lay judges in the finer points of law. (It does present interesting questions about the criminal liability of a judge, which does exist.)
I'm going to write a separate article on the lay judge system in the near future.
On this question: "Regular courts and administrative courts: This whole concept seems pretty strange to me. Do the two courts ever argue over jurisdiction? Eg: If an administrator uses his privileges or authority in a way that could be deemed a criminal act."
I would say that there are two separate causes of action in that: the question of whether the decision should be overturned as unlawful belongs to the administrative courts, while the question of whether the administrator committed a crime when making that decision belongs to the regular courts. In that sense I think both court systems have jurisdiction but their jurisdiction does not overlap, ie. they consider separate questions. In practice, I'd assume that the regular court would wait for the administrative court's decision before trying the criminal case (in practice, I'd say that the prosecutor would do the waiting before pressing charges).
On the plea question: the defendant does state guilty/not-guilty at the start of the main trial, as will become clear in a separate article. A not-guilty plea must be accompanied by a short statement of the main substantial disagreement with prosecution (for example, "not guilty because I was not there", "not guilty because there is no crime here").
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 15 marras 2005 08:09
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
On the plea question, again: the "plea" at the start of the trial is a part of the initial segment of the main trial, where the court determines the points of dispute. If the defendant does not dispute any of the facts claimed by the prosecution, then typically no evidence is examined, and all those facts are accepted as given. Of course, the court does consider whether the "plea" is believable, but it is rare to disregard a guilty plea.
What makes plea bargaining ineffective in Finland is that the court is not constrained to the prosecution's legal analysis. If the undisputed facts presented to the court in the opinion of the court indicate a murder beyond reasonable doubt, then it does not matter that the prosecution may have only demanded punishment for involuntary manslaughter. The court will convict the defendant of murder. The only thing about the original prosecution's case that constrains the court is that it can only investigate the act that the prosecution demands punishment for.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 15 marras 2005 08:29
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Good to know someone out there is reading my blog. Thanks too, for giving perspective into another "minority" legal system. I think it's quite important to have an idea of how other countries have implemented their legal systems -- compare, contrast, and maybe get some ideas to put to lawmakers in our own jurisdictions.
I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on the efficacy (and also the practice) of lay judges. Recently, there have been some loud noises made about a switch from the practice of unanimous verdicts (in order to convict or acquit, a jury must be all in agreement, otherwise the jury is dismissed and the trial starts again) to majority verdicts (take a straw poll, and whichever side has more votes "wins"). I'd love to know more about the alternatives to both of these choices.
I'm looking forward to reading more about *your* legal adventures!
- Matt
- Matt Palmer, ti, 15 marras 2005 08:58
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Obviously, I cannot discuss any actual cases I have been involved in. The public record of a case is all there is, and members of the court do not comment or explain the decisions further.
But I will be talking in general terms, and I will be offering dramatized accounts of fictional cases, based on my experience in general.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 15 marras 2005 09:47
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Thanks for your detailed answers, I look forward to your future articles.
- vasi, ke, 16 marras 2005 01:58
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Sorry to be asking a comment based on my own ignorance- but the way you were describing the Finnish legal system seemed to indicate that the Finnish legal system is a hybrid between the adversarial and inquisitorial court systems- (I am from Australia where we have an adversarial system) and I am curious as to how the Finnish classify their own legal system- do you describe it as inquisitorial ?(I think another name for this is a civil law system as opposed to a common law system)
- Jamie, su, 20 marras 2005 10:15
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
I believe the new system is supposed to be adversarial. What makes you think otherwise?
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, su, 20 marras 2005 12:12
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
I think I may have thought that most of the socialist countries in Europe would have inquisitorial style systems because the emphasis on justice shifts more to the judge as an investigator, rather than allowing the richest person to obtain the best lawyers and usually win- buts thats interesting that you have adversarial- goes to show all my stereotyping of your government turned out to be wrong on this aspect.(thanks for the quick reply)
- Jamie, ma, 21 marras 2005 12:04
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Oh well, Finland was never socialist in the sense of the Warsaw pact :) And I believe eg. France has traditionally had an inquisitional system (dunno about the current system).
The Finnish court system descends from the Viking system of Things, which is still evident in the name of the District Courts: käräjäoikeus is literally translated the Court of the Thing. (Thing being, according to Wikipedia, the modern English term for it; the modern meaning of 'thing' being a derivative of that meaning.)
There were a number of big reforms in Finnish court systems in the 1990's. I'll write about them later.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ma, 21 marras 2005 13:21
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Unfortunately, comments are now closed (the comments system does not allow me to extend this timeout specifically for a particular blog posting - I made this posting by editing the database). Email me at antti-juhani@kaijanaho.info if you have more questions or comments; I will make new postings if necessary.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 22 marras 2005 06:51
Re: Driving While Intoxicated – A Glimpse of Finnish Criminal Justice, Part One
A couple of things I find interesting.
First is the "I demand punishment" formula for the prosecutor. There have been many movements lately for justice to focus on protecting or bettering society, rather than punishing people. Has anybody in Finland objected to the prosecutor's formula on such grounds?
Second is examining the defendant's income. It seems awfully invasive to make public someone's finances. Are fines income-dependent or something? Could someone refuse to tell their income?
Thanks as always for the interesting posts!
- vasi, ti, 22 marras 2005 23:56
Re: Driving While Intoxicated – A Glimpse of Finnish Criminal Justice, Part One
Income information is public anyway, as individual taxation figures are public (every year the press has a field day with the new taxation information, publishing the income etc. of well known and exceptionally wealthy persons; not surprisingly every year about the same time there's a few days of public discussion of whether public taxation is a good thing or not, never leading into any changes in that system).
Fines are measured in day-fines, which I suppose is intended to cover one day's income minus mandatory expenses. The euro amount of a day-fine is calculated by taking the monthly income after taxes, subtracting 255 euros and then dividing by 60; finally for each dependent (child), three euros are subtracted. However, the minimum day-fine is six euros; there is no maximum. For the example case, the monthly net income was 500 euros; subtracting 255 gives 245 euros, which divided by 60 yields 4.08 euros, which gets upgraded to the minimum of six euros.
I believe the "I demand punishment" formula is based on the theory that the court only considers demands made by the parties (though this is a little fuzzy). I'm not aware of any controversy.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ke, 23 marras 2005 07:33
Re: Driving While Intoxicated – A Glimpse of Finnish Criminal Justice, Part One
The court will always have access to a summary of the defendant's last completed taxation, and the court will use that if the defendant does not claim that it has changed (including specifying the new income information).
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ke, 23 marras 2005 07:37
Re: Driving While Intoxicated – A Glimpse of Finnish Criminal Justice, Part One
Thanks for the explanation.
- vasi, ke, 23 marras 2005 18:50
Re: The Finnish lay judge system
I really don't see what's the point of limiting access to lay judge positions to Finnish citizens and to those over 25 year old, especially in a country where 18 is the voting age and where foreigners are allowed to vote and to be a candiadate in those municipal elections.
- Martin-Éric, to, 17 marras 2005 00:34
Re: The Finnish lay judge system
Wow, I've gotta say this sounds dangerous! I don't know if you have anti-immigrant parties in Finland, but many countries do (eg: the 'UKIP' in Britain). Could a party like that get a lay judge appointed who would almost always rule against immigrants!?
In my area, many towns don't have political parties. Do all Finnish areas have parties? If not, what do they do elsewhere?
Thanks again for the articles!
- vasi, to, 17 marras 2005 03:52
Re: The Finnish lay judge system
The "allot the seats to the parties" is a convention, it's not a legal requirement (and frankly is against the spirit of the system). As long as such a party is open about what it does, and it doesn't have majority, I would expect the other parties not to give them such access.
And yes, parties are a force locally, too (they are most of the time the national-level parties that participate in the parliament). This is because the municipal councillors are elected from a single district, the whole municipality. The d'Hondt system is used to allocate seats, and that requires some sort of party structure at every municipality.
Any judge (lay or not) allowing his or her decisions to be biased risks indictment and conviction for mishandling a public office.
(BTW, the political persuasion of lay judges is not in practice visible in courts. I know most of my fellow lay judges are active in politics, but unless I know them from elsewhere, I don't have a clue as to what their political persuasion is.)
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, to, 17 marras 2005 07:44
Re: The Finnish lay judge system
Martin, the fact that you are considered to be capable of being one decision maker amongst several thousand (or more) on a general issue like "who should be in the parliament for the next few years" at 18 doesn't have a lot of bearing on whether you'll be suitable to be one of 3 or 4 direct decision makers on the future of one particular human being.
It's going to be tricky to work out what age *is* suitable for being a lay judge, but certainly tacking a few extra years of life experience onto a judge beyond being able to vote in elections isn't a pointless exercise, to my way of thinking.
- Matt Palmer, la, 19 marras 2005 01:50
Re: The Finnish lay judge system
Matt, my only point is on equal rights for equal responsabilities.
- Martin-Éric, ti, 22 marras 2005 16:13
Re: The Finnish lay judge system
Comments to this entry close in a few hours. If you still have comments or questions, email me at antti-juhani@kaijanaho.info; I can make a new entry responding to those comments and opening a new comment thread for discussion.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ke, 23 marras 2005 19:11
Re: The main hearing in a Finnish criminal trial
That defendants are neither bound to nor expected to tell the truth, and that the decision is largely based on outside witnesses says a lot about this country's prejudicial manners. Sad.
- Martin-Éric, to, 17 marras 2005 00:49
Re: The main hearing in a Finnish criminal trial
I found it odd, too, that defendants were in no way required to tell the truth, but when I thought about it further, it really isn't that far off what happens in other jurisdictions -- everybody expects defendants to lie, as the consequences of telling "the whole truth" on the stand can be pretty severe. I'm curious to know how judges (in general) treat the statements of defendants, when there is an an explicit statement that what the defendant is saying on the stand could be 100% A-grade bulldust. Over here (.au), the jury is able to make their own judgment on the weight they give any witness' testimony, and I presume that a judge in the Finnish system could choose to give less weight to any particular witness' testimony, including that of the defendant. Does it work out in practice, then, that everyone more of less turns to their PSPs when the defendant takes the stand, since they know that they're going to give very little weight to what the defendant has to say anyway?
- Matt Palmer, la, 19 marras 2005 01:56
Re: The main hearing in a Finnish criminal trial
In general, I don't think the formal truth obligation or its lack has much importance when deciding whether a story is credible. It is very hard for me to say anything more without discussing actual cases, so I hope you'll all forgive me for this vague statement :)
Of course, perjury is a crime and one can be prosecuted for it if there is probable cause (and convicted in the absence of reasonable doubt). It is fairly rare to my knowledge, though.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, la, 19 marras 2005 23:16
Re: The main hearing in a Finnish criminal trial
Comments to this entry are closing in a couple of hours. Email me at antti-juhani@kaijanaho.info if you have comments or questions later on; I can create new posts to answer them and to allow for further debate :)
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ke, 23 marras 2005 07:34
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Interesting. The lay judges seem to form a sort of hybrid judge-jury system -- like the Anglo-American system, they are laypeople and are responsible for deciding innocence or guilt, but there isn't the same separation between the legal expert who rules on matters of law and the jury which rules on matters of fact (which witnesses are credible, what actually happened etc).
But what, in the Finnish system, corresponds to the role of the American supreme court in deciding that the legislature has overstepped its bounds (passing a law that violates the constitution or treaties that the country is bound to follow)? That is really the only sense that American courts "make law": they resolve ambiguities and the law and sometimes rule that a law is unconstitutional, or that a local government has exceeded its authority.
- Joe Buck, ti, 15 marras 2005 03:06
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
No Finnish court has authority to strike down law. Any court is obligated to ignore ordinary law that is in "obvious conflict" with the constitution, but this is in practice very rare. The constitutionality of laws is decided by a special committee of the unicameral parliament, while each bill is being processed by the parliament. Governmental authority is checked by the administrative courts that any person or entity affected by a governmental decision at any level can appeal to, if one considers the decision to be unlawful. This appeal of governmental decisions is somewhat a national sport, and occasionally people in high positions propose limiting that right due to its preceived abuse.
The lack of a constitutional court is a problem according to many Finns, myself included.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 15 marras 2005 06:37
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Thanks for the article, it's always fun to learn new things. A couple of quick questions, if you have time....
* Rules of evidence: If these rules aren't strict, how do courts deal with evidence that (for good reasons) isn't allowed in the English tradition? For example, it's not allowed in the USA for witnesses to report hearsay and opinion, to prevent bias against an unpopular party to the lawsuit. Also, evidence gathered illegally is not allowed to be considered, such as if the police broke into someone's home without a warrant.
Do Finnish courts accept this evidence equally? Do they hear the evidence, but trust the judges to give it less or no credence?
* Plea bargains: Does the Finnish system have the concept of a 'plea' at all? I know many civil law systems don't. Makes sense, in my opinion! I think the concept of a plea bargain is very silly and dangerous.
* Regular courts and administrative courts: This whole concept seems pretty strange to me. Do the two courts ever argue over jurisdiction? Eg: If an administrator uses his privileges or authority in a way that could be deemed a criminal act.
* How are judges chosen, especially lay judges?
As for constitutional courts, I like the system we have here in Canada.
In the USA, laws can only be invalidated when the Supreme Court hears a relevant case. So the government can even intentionally pass a law that is unconstitutional, and have that law be active for at least a few months or years. But in France, laws can only be invalidated when they are referred to a special constitutional court. If several years later, the law is discovered to have unintentional consequences that are unconstitutional, tant pis!
In Canada, we allow both kinds of examination of laws. The government can refer a question to the Supreme Court, to ask 'do you think this potential law is unconstitutional?'. (This decision is technically non-binding.) But the Supreme Court can also invalidate laws on appeal if they are unconstitutional, just like in the USA.
This system seems to work well for us! But we have some problems with choosing judges for the Supreme Court, so maybe one day Finland will invent an even better system. :-)
- vasi, ti, 15 marras 2005 07:42
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Some of those questions are beyond my competence. I'll have to get back to you on the rules of evidence after I've consulted the criminal judicial process book I received as a birthday present recently. In practice, the legally trained judge is primarily responsible for guinding us lay judges in the finer points of law. (It does present interesting questions about the criminal liability of a judge, which does exist.)
I'm going to write a separate article on the lay judge system in the near future.
On this question: "Regular courts and administrative courts: This whole concept seems pretty strange to me. Do the two courts ever argue over jurisdiction? Eg: If an administrator uses his privileges or authority in a way that could be deemed a criminal act."
I would say that there are two separate causes of action in that: the question of whether the decision should be overturned as unlawful belongs to the administrative courts, while the question of whether the administrator committed a crime when making that decision belongs to the regular courts. In that sense I think both court systems have jurisdiction but their jurisdiction does not overlap, ie. they consider separate questions. In practice, I'd assume that the regular court would wait for the administrative court's decision before trying the criminal case (in practice, I'd say that the prosecutor would do the waiting before pressing charges).
On the plea question: the defendant does state guilty/not-guilty at the start of the main trial, as will become clear in a separate article. A not-guilty plea must be accompanied by a short statement of the main substantial disagreement with prosecution (for example, "not guilty because I was not there", "not guilty because there is no crime here").
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 15 marras 2005 08:09
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
On the plea question, again: the "plea" at the start of the trial is a part of the initial segment of the main trial, where the court determines the points of dispute. If the defendant does not dispute any of the facts claimed by the prosecution, then typically no evidence is examined, and all those facts are accepted as given. Of course, the court does consider whether the "plea" is believable, but it is rare to disregard a guilty plea.
What makes plea bargaining ineffective in Finland is that the court is not constrained to the prosecution's legal analysis. If the undisputed facts presented to the court in the opinion of the court indicate a murder beyond reasonable doubt, then it does not matter that the prosecution may have only demanded punishment for involuntary manslaughter. The court will convict the defendant of murder. The only thing about the original prosecution's case that constrains the court is that it can only investigate the act that the prosecution demands punishment for.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 15 marras 2005 08:29
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Good to know someone out there is reading my blog. Thanks too, for giving perspective into another "minority" legal system. I think it's quite important to have an idea of how other countries have implemented their legal systems -- compare, contrast, and maybe get some ideas to put to lawmakers in our own jurisdictions.
I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on the efficacy (and also the practice) of lay judges. Recently, there have been some loud noises made about a switch from the practice of unanimous verdicts (in order to convict or acquit, a jury must be all in agreement, otherwise the jury is dismissed and the trial starts again) to majority verdicts (take a straw poll, and whichever side has more votes "wins"). I'd love to know more about the alternatives to both of these choices.
I'm looking forward to reading more about *your* legal adventures!
- Matt
- Matt Palmer, ti, 15 marras 2005 08:58
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Obviously, I cannot discuss any actual cases I have been involved in. The public record of a case is all there is, and members of the court do not comment or explain the decisions further.
But I will be talking in general terms, and I will be offering dramatized accounts of fictional cases, based on my experience in general.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 15 marras 2005 09:47
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Thanks for your detailed answers, I look forward to your future articles.
- vasi, ke, 16 marras 2005 01:58
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Sorry to be asking a comment based on my own ignorance- but the way you were describing the Finnish legal system seemed to indicate that the Finnish legal system is a hybrid between the adversarial and inquisitorial court systems- (I am from Australia where we have an adversarial system) and I am curious as to how the Finnish classify their own legal system- do you describe it as inquisitorial ?(I think another name for this is a civil law system as opposed to a common law system)
- Jamie, su, 20 marras 2005 10:15
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
I believe the new system is supposed to be adversarial. What makes you think otherwise?
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, su, 20 marras 2005 12:12
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
I think I may have thought that most of the socialist countries in Europe would have inquisitorial style systems because the emphasis on justice shifts more to the judge as an investigator, rather than allowing the richest person to obtain the best lawyers and usually win- buts thats interesting that you have adversarial- goes to show all my stereotyping of your government turned out to be wrong on this aspect.(thanks for the quick reply)
- Jamie, ma, 21 marras 2005 12:04
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Oh well, Finland was never socialist in the sense of the Warsaw pact :) And I believe eg. France has traditionally had an inquisitional system (dunno about the current system).
The Finnish court system descends from the Viking system of Things, which is still evident in the name of the District Courts: käräjäoikeus is literally translated the Court of the Thing. (Thing being, according to Wikipedia, the modern English term for it; the modern meaning of 'thing' being a derivative of that meaning.)
There were a number of big reforms in Finnish court systems in the 1990's. I'll write about them later.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ma, 21 marras 2005 13:21
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Unfortunately, comments are now closed (the comments system does not allow me to extend this timeout specifically for a particular blog posting - I made this posting by editing the database). Email me at antti-juhani@kaijanaho.info if you have more questions or comments; I will make new postings if necessary.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 22 marras 2005 06:51
Re: Driving While Intoxicated – A Glimpse of Finnish Criminal Justice, Part One
A couple of things I find interesting.
First is the "I demand punishment" formula for the prosecutor. There have been many movements lately for justice to focus on protecting or bettering society, rather than punishing people. Has anybody in Finland objected to the prosecutor's formula on such grounds?
Second is examining the defendant's income. It seems awfully invasive to make public someone's finances. Are fines income-dependent or something? Could someone refuse to tell their income?
Thanks as always for the interesting posts!
- vasi, ti, 22 marras 2005 23:56
Re: Driving While Intoxicated – A Glimpse of Finnish Criminal Justice, Part One
Income information is public anyway, as individual taxation figures are public (every year the press has a field day with the new taxation information, publishing the income etc. of well known and exceptionally wealthy persons; not surprisingly every year about the same time there's a few days of public discussion of whether public taxation is a good thing or not, never leading into any changes in that system).
Fines are measured in day-fines, which I suppose is intended to cover one day's income minus mandatory expenses. The euro amount of a day-fine is calculated by taking the monthly income after taxes, subtracting 255 euros and then dividing by 60; finally for each dependent (child), three euros are subtracted. However, the minimum day-fine is six euros; there is no maximum. For the example case, the monthly net income was 500 euros; subtracting 255 gives 245 euros, which divided by 60 yields 4.08 euros, which gets upgraded to the minimum of six euros.
I believe the "I demand punishment" formula is based on the theory that the court only considers demands made by the parties (though this is a little fuzzy). I'm not aware of any controversy.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ke, 23 marras 2005 07:33
Re: Driving While Intoxicated – A Glimpse of Finnish Criminal Justice, Part One
The court will always have access to a summary of the defendant's last completed taxation, and the court will use that if the defendant does not claim that it has changed (including specifying the new income information).
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ke, 23 marras 2005 07:37
Re: Driving While Intoxicated – A Glimpse of Finnish Criminal Justice, Part One
Thanks for the explanation.
- vasi, ke, 23 marras 2005 18:50
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Interesting. The lay judges seem to form a sort of hybrid judge-jury system -- like the Anglo-American system, they are laypeople and are responsible for deciding innocence or guilt, but there isn't the same separation between the legal expert who rules on matters of law and the jury which rules on matters of fact (which witnesses are credible, what actually happened etc).
But what, in the Finnish system, corresponds to the role of the American supreme court in deciding that the legislature has overstepped its bounds (passing a law that violates the constitution or treaties that the country is bound to follow)? That is really the only sense that American courts "make law": they resolve ambiguities and the law and sometimes rule that a law is unconstitutional, or that a local government has exceeded its authority.
- Joe Buck, ti, 15 marras 2005 03:06
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
No Finnish court has authority to strike down law. Any court is obligated to ignore ordinary law that is in "obvious conflict" with the constitution, but this is in practice very rare. The constitutionality of laws is decided by a special committee of the unicameral parliament, while each bill is being processed by the parliament. Governmental authority is checked by the administrative courts that any person or entity affected by a governmental decision at any level can appeal to, if one considers the decision to be unlawful. This appeal of governmental decisions is somewhat a national sport, and occasionally people in high positions propose limiting that right due to its preceived abuse.
The lack of a constitutional court is a problem according to many Finns, myself included.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 15 marras 2005 06:37
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Thanks for the article, it's always fun to learn new things. A couple of quick questions, if you have time....
* Rules of evidence: If these rules aren't strict, how do courts deal with evidence that (for good reasons) isn't allowed in the English tradition? For example, it's not allowed in the USA for witnesses to report hearsay and opinion, to prevent bias against an unpopular party to the lawsuit. Also, evidence gathered illegally is not allowed to be considered, such as if the police broke into someone's home without a warrant.
Do Finnish courts accept this evidence equally? Do they hear the evidence, but trust the judges to give it less or no credence?
* Plea bargains: Does the Finnish system have the concept of a 'plea' at all? I know many civil law systems don't. Makes sense, in my opinion! I think the concept of a plea bargain is very silly and dangerous.
* Regular courts and administrative courts: This whole concept seems pretty strange to me. Do the two courts ever argue over jurisdiction? Eg: If an administrator uses his privileges or authority in a way that could be deemed a criminal act.
* How are judges chosen, especially lay judges?
As for constitutional courts, I like the system we have here in Canada.
In the USA, laws can only be invalidated when the Supreme Court hears a relevant case. So the government can even intentionally pass a law that is unconstitutional, and have that law be active for at least a few months or years. But in France, laws can only be invalidated when they are referred to a special constitutional court. If several years later, the law is discovered to have unintentional consequences that are unconstitutional, tant pis!
In Canada, we allow both kinds of examination of laws. The government can refer a question to the Supreme Court, to ask 'do you think this potential law is unconstitutional?'. (This decision is technically non-binding.) But the Supreme Court can also invalidate laws on appeal if they are unconstitutional, just like in the USA.
This system seems to work well for us! But we have some problems with choosing judges for the Supreme Court, so maybe one day Finland will invent an even better system. :-)
- vasi, ti, 15 marras 2005 07:42
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Some of those questions are beyond my competence. I'll have to get back to you on the rules of evidence after I've consulted the criminal judicial process book I received as a birthday present recently. In practice, the legally trained judge is primarily responsible for guinding us lay judges in the finer points of law. (It does present interesting questions about the criminal liability of a judge, which does exist.)
I'm going to write a separate article on the lay judge system in the near future.
On this question: "Regular courts and administrative courts: This whole concept seems pretty strange to me. Do the two courts ever argue over jurisdiction? Eg: If an administrator uses his privileges or authority in a way that could be deemed a criminal act."
I would say that there are two separate causes of action in that: the question of whether the decision should be overturned as unlawful belongs to the administrative courts, while the question of whether the administrator committed a crime when making that decision belongs to the regular courts. In that sense I think both court systems have jurisdiction but their jurisdiction does not overlap, ie. they consider separate questions. In practice, I'd assume that the regular court would wait for the administrative court's decision before trying the criminal case (in practice, I'd say that the prosecutor would do the waiting before pressing charges).
On the plea question: the defendant does state guilty/not-guilty at the start of the main trial, as will become clear in a separate article. A not-guilty plea must be accompanied by a short statement of the main substantial disagreement with prosecution (for example, "not guilty because I was not there", "not guilty because there is no crime here").
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 15 marras 2005 08:09
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
On the plea question, again: the "plea" at the start of the trial is a part of the initial segment of the main trial, where the court determines the points of dispute. If the defendant does not dispute any of the facts claimed by the prosecution, then typically no evidence is examined, and all those facts are accepted as given. Of course, the court does consider whether the "plea" is believable, but it is rare to disregard a guilty plea.
What makes plea bargaining ineffective in Finland is that the court is not constrained to the prosecution's legal analysis. If the undisputed facts presented to the court in the opinion of the court indicate a murder beyond reasonable doubt, then it does not matter that the prosecution may have only demanded punishment for involuntary manslaughter. The court will convict the defendant of murder. The only thing about the original prosecution's case that constrains the court is that it can only investigate the act that the prosecution demands punishment for.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 15 marras 2005 08:29
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Good to know someone out there is reading my blog. Thanks too, for giving perspective into another "minority" legal system. I think it's quite important to have an idea of how other countries have implemented their legal systems -- compare, contrast, and maybe get some ideas to put to lawmakers in our own jurisdictions.
I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on the efficacy (and also the practice) of lay judges. Recently, there have been some loud noises made about a switch from the practice of unanimous verdicts (in order to convict or acquit, a jury must be all in agreement, otherwise the jury is dismissed and the trial starts again) to majority verdicts (take a straw poll, and whichever side has more votes "wins"). I'd love to know more about the alternatives to both of these choices.
I'm looking forward to reading more about *your* legal adventures!
- Matt
- Matt Palmer, ti, 15 marras 2005 08:58
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Obviously, I cannot discuss any actual cases I have been involved in. The public record of a case is all there is, and members of the court do not comment or explain the decisions further.
But I will be talking in general terms, and I will be offering dramatized accounts of fictional cases, based on my experience in general.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 15 marras 2005 09:47
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Thanks for your detailed answers, I look forward to your future articles.
- vasi, ke, 16 marras 2005 01:58
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Sorry to be asking a comment based on my own ignorance- but the way you were describing the Finnish legal system seemed to indicate that the Finnish legal system is a hybrid between the adversarial and inquisitorial court systems- (I am from Australia where we have an adversarial system) and I am curious as to how the Finnish classify their own legal system- do you describe it as inquisitorial ?(I think another name for this is a civil law system as opposed to a common law system)
- Jamie, su, 20 marras 2005 10:15
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
I believe the new system is supposed to be adversarial. What makes you think otherwise?
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, su, 20 marras 2005 12:12
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
I think I may have thought that most of the socialist countries in Europe would have inquisitorial style systems because the emphasis on justice shifts more to the judge as an investigator, rather than allowing the richest person to obtain the best lawyers and usually win- buts thats interesting that you have adversarial- goes to show all my stereotyping of your government turned out to be wrong on this aspect.(thanks for the quick reply)
- Jamie, ma, 21 marras 2005 12:04
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Oh well, Finland was never socialist in the sense of the Warsaw pact :) And I believe eg. France has traditionally had an inquisitional system (dunno about the current system).
The Finnish court system descends from the Viking system of Things, which is still evident in the name of the District Courts: käräjäoikeus is literally translated the Court of the Thing. (Thing being, according to Wikipedia, the modern English term for it; the modern meaning of 'thing' being a derivative of that meaning.)
There were a number of big reforms in Finnish court systems in the 1990's. I'll write about them later.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ma, 21 marras 2005 13:21
Re: The Finnish Criminal Court System
Unfortunately, comments are now closed (the comments system does not allow me to extend this timeout specifically for a particular blog posting - I made this posting by editing the database). Email me at antti-juhani@kaijanaho.info if you have more questions or comments; I will make new postings if necessary.
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, ti, 22 marras 2005 06:51
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