The Supreme Court sent the Taiwan High Court’s judgment to extend former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) detention back to the High Court last week, saying its reasons were inadequate. But the collegiate panel handling the case at the High Court decided to extend Chen’s detention anyway, citing almost exactly the same reasons.
This has again highlighted the nation’s problematic custody system. Can the same collegiate panel be expected to overrule a decision it has made previously? Can the High Court simply ignore the concerns cited by the Supreme Court?
Article 17, Section 8 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) says that “a judge shall disqualify himself from the case concerned on his own motion and may not exercise his functions” if he or she “has participated in the decision at a previous trial.”
The collegiate panel should have recused itself from Chen’s detention case after the Supreme Court sent the case back to the High Court because it cannot be expected to overturn its previous decision. This is the main reason for Article 17.
The current practice when reviewing the prosecution’s request to extend custody is to focus on protecting people and objects.
The members of the panel believe they are protecting evidence by extending Chen’s detention and that they do not have to disqualify themselves from the case.
A look at the latest custody review, however, reveals that this is no longer a matter of simply preserving evidence, but now involves the actual case against Chen.
Given that the custody review and the trial are being handled by the same court, it has a good understanding of all the evidence, so it would be difficult to justify the claim that the High Court has not already reached an evaluation of the evidence.
It is also contrary to the Code of Criminal Procedure and ignores its goals, one of which is to use mandatory recusal to ensure an impartial court and protect the rights of the accused.
Even if impartiality could be maintained when a decision is returned to the same collegiate panel, lower courts should be bound by the decisions of higher courts, lest the appeal system become pointless.
Since a court does not want to embarrass itself by overturning its own decision, it will often try to find a new piece of evidence to defend its initial decision.
When this happens, the appeal system becomes pointless. A detainee can easily be caught up in a vicious cycle of being put in custody, appealing and having the decision sent back to the deciding court, where the same decision is reached.
The goals of a custody review and the court case it is related to are not one and the same. This means that ideally, the decision to detain someone should not be made by the same collegiate panel handling the court case in question lest detention become a means to pressure the accused into confessing.
Because of limited judicial resources, the current practice is to accept that this sometimes is not attainable.
However, by letting the same collegiate panel review its own decision — and virtually ignore the concerns of the Supreme Court — the accused effectively loses recourse to challenge a court’s decision.
A just legal system cannot rely on a court’s self discipline. Doing so is a recipe for an arbitrary judiciary that stifles human rights.
Wu Ching-chin is an assistant professor in the Department of Financial and Economic Law at Alethia University.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
The gutting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) by US President Donald Trump’s administration poses a serious threat to the global voice of freedom, particularly for those living under authoritarian regimes such as China. The US — hailed as the model of liberal democracy — has the moral responsibility to uphold the values it champions. In undermining these institutions, the US risks diminishing its “soft power,” a pivotal pillar of its global influence. VOA Tibetan and RFA Tibetan played an enormous role in promoting the strong image of the US in and outside Tibet. On VOA Tibetan,
Former minister of culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) has long wielded influence through the power of words. Her articles once served as a moral compass for a society in transition. However, as her April 1 guest article in the New York Times, “The Clock Is Ticking for Taiwan,” makes all too clear, even celebrated prose can mislead when romanticism clouds political judgement. Lung crafts a narrative that is less an analysis of Taiwan’s geopolitical reality than an exercise in wistful nostalgia. As political scientists and international relations academics, we believe it is crucial to correct the misconceptions embedded in her article,
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), caused a national outrage and drew diplomatic condemnation on Tuesday after he arrived at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office dressed in a Nazi uniform. Sung performed a Nazi salute and carried a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as he arrived to be questioned over allegations of signature forgery in the recall petition. The KMT’s response to the incident has shown a striking lack of contrition and decency. Rather than apologizing and distancing itself from Sung’s actions,
US President Trump weighed into the state of America’s semiconductor manufacturing when he declared, “They [Taiwan] stole it from us. They took it from us, and I don’t blame them. I give them credit.” At a prior White House event President Trump hosted TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), head of the world’s largest and most advanced chip manufacturer, to announce a commitment to invest US$100 billion in America. The president then shifted his previously critical rhetoric on Taiwan and put off tariffs on its chips. Now we learn that the Trump Administration is conducting a “trade investigation” on semiconductors which
RSS