After being sentenced to 11 years and six months in prison on corruption charges, former Kaohsiung district prosecutor Ching Tien-po (井天博) made use of the window period between the Supreme Court’s final verdict in his case and the beginning of his sentence to flee abroad. As similar episodes continue to play out, should the public point its finger at the Agency Against Corruption, prosecutors, or the court?
If the aim is to prevent a convict from fleeing after the first ruling is handed down and before the jail sentence begins, the accused would have to be detained until the verdict is finalized so that sentencing can be carried out seamlessly.
However, since detention must be done selectively and since there is a limit to how long a person can be detained, it is incredibly difficult to put this idea into practice. In the real world, unless a person is charged with murder, Taiwan’s judicial system has probably only ever followed through on this practice with former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Since detention should only be used as a last resort, before the verdict is finalized, detention must be replaced by bail. However, money means different things to different people, and so it is difficult to create a standard determining how high a bail should be.
That is especially the case in corruption cases such as Ching’s, which involved so much money that probably no bail amount would have prevented him from fleeing.
Even if the accused are confined to their residences and have to report to the police everyday when they are released on bail, the law does not stipulate that the accused should be monitored with digital devices, and so their whereabouts can only be monitored by police.
Since the police have limited manpower and cannot monitor the accused 24 hours a day, the confinement in effect is nothing more than a voluntary undertaking and loopholes are unavoidable.
More important, Article 456 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) states that a sentence should be promptly carried out once the verdict is finalized.
However, in practice, prosecutors have to wait until they receive a court notification or the ruling before they can issue a summons to the convict. Prosecutors also usually give convicts a certain amount of time to prepare before they start jail time. Hence, a somewhat lengthy window is created.
Although this window is created based on humane considerations, enforceable measures to prevent escape, such as surveillance, remand, arrest and detention, only apply to the accused, and, according to the principle of legal reservation, cannot apply to someone who has already been convicted.
Hence, in Ching’s case, the Agency Against Corruption can only use manpower to keep an eye on the whereabouts of the convict, which leaves serious loopholes, giving Ching a great opportunity to escape punishment.
Although the imperfect measures to prevent escape may be one of the reasons why such things continue to happen, the primary reason is perhaps law enforcement authorities have never learn the lessons of past experience and have the habit of passing the buck as soon as something goes wrong.
Ching’s escape has given the public the impression that even if the rich and powerful can be convicted and given heavy sentences, they can still easily escape the legal consequences. This could cause public confidence in the authority of the judicial system, which has already been profoundly shaken, to collapse.
Wu Ching-chin is an associate professor and chair of Aletheia University’s law department.
Translated by Ethan Zhan
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