A man arrested and charged with bringing a bag containing stimulant drugs into Narita International Airport thought his trial would start on March 4 and a verdict handed down by the end of the month.

However, the man and his lawyer were shocked when told by the judge that due to the coronavirus outbreak, he wouldn't stand trial until late this year. The defendant will remain in detention until then.

“It will be in November at the earliest,” the judge told the man in his 30s at a pretrial conference on March 3 at the Chiba District Court.

Legal experts are worried about delays from the novel coronavirus spread affecting defendants, particularly those in detention, as court schedules have been disrupted and the lay judge system severely impacted.

At least 57 lay judge trials had been postponed out of concerns for the health of the citizen judges and fear of the spread as of March 6, according to a recent survey by The Asahi Shimbun.

Judges are concerned about such postponements because they result in prolonging the detention of defendants.

In the Chiba District Court trial, two of the six lay judges resigned, citing the coronavirus outbreak. The alternate lay judges also resigned. Unable to seat six lay judges as required, the court postponed the man’s trial.

The defendant has no choice but to wait for eight months, because “the court has a very tight schedule with other trials.”

The man, who proclaimed his innocence, has been detained since his arrest last year in June.

“I understand the situation, but he is in no way responsible for that,” said Tatsuya Kaneko, the defendant's lawyer. “If he is declared innocent, the eight-month detainment period will be deemed unjust.”

Kaneko said the court should either reschedule the trial or grant bail to his client.

At the Nagoya District Court, a lay judge trial over a case of smuggling stimulant drugs was forced to start over after four days of hearings.

The ruling was scheduled on March 4, with lay judges expected to hold deliberations the day before. But three lay judges resigned by then, halting the legal process completely.

Had the lay judges completed their deliberations and issued a verdict, the presiding judge could have just delivered it. Now, the court needs to call for new lay judges and start the trial over.

At the Osaka District Court, an arson trial scheduled to begin March 12 was canceled.

The 69-year-old male defendant suffers from dementia. One of the major arguments is if the accused was mentally competent to be held responsible for his actions when the incident occurred.

Now, the first hearing is expected to be held around July.

“Over the course of time, it is highly likely that the man’s memory will further fade,” the accused’s lawyer said.

The Tokyo District Court leads the number of trials postponed with 11, followed by the Chiba District Court with six and the Osaka District Court with five.

Many of the postponed hearings were scheduled in March.

Usually, a verdict is delivered to about 80 defendants a month in the lay judge system.

The Supreme Court on Feb. 26 notified courts around the country to “consider flexibility in changing schedules in a non-urgent case after taking into account of what the people involved in the case want.”

Many trials that are expected to be completed within several days have been held as scheduled. But the lay judge selection process, which requires that dozens of citizens be screened, put into a pool and then selected through a lottery, has been mostly postponed.

Akira Sugeno, a secretary-general of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations’ criminal case defense center, is concerned that postponements have inflicted financial losses on defendants while they are held in long detentions.

“Even if a defendant gets a not-guilty verdict, he or she will only receive monetary compensation up to 12,500 yen ($129) per day. They will not be able to make up for lost time,” Sugeno said.

He also points out that the delays caused by COVID-19 will affect trials as it will become more difficult for witnesses to recall their memories of an incident.

A penal judge expressed the dilemma posed by the coronavirus threat: “A trial involving a defendant in detention cannot be treated the same way as other cases or a 'general' (public) event, but I cannot ignore the anxiety of lay judges."

Another judge said, “A lay judge trial is held on consecutive days, so it is difficult to put off the date and squeeze it in the calendar. We will try to dutifully handle each case and update the schedule to minimize the adverse effects.”

Courts have taken measures to lower the risk of infection among courtroom spectators.

The Supreme Court has imposed a rule on spectators to sit in every other seat starting from March 6.

District courts in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe and others have placed spectators at a distance of approximately 1 meter apart. Such measures will reduce the number of seats in the courtroom gallery to about 30 percent of usual.