In 2013, former minister of transportation and communications Kuo Yao-chi (郭瑤琪) was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison for corruption. After serving two years of her sentence, she was granted medical parole on Jan. 15 last year to receive treatment for cancer.
During this time, Kuo submitted at least seven requests to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office to lodge an extraordinary appeal, but all her requests were rejected.
However, in April, the Control Yuan published a report on its investigation into the case, which says that the verdict might not comply with the law.
The Control Yuan called upon the prosecutor-general to consider lodging an extraordinary appeal.
Prosecutor-General Yen Da-ho (顏大和) complied and lodged an extraordinary appeal with the Supreme Court on May 23.
It is too early to tell how the appeal will work out, but it raises some points to ponder.
First is the way judges use judicial discretion. A witness in the case against Kuo said he had delivered a bribe concealed in tea canisters to Kuo, but his descriptions of the color and number of canisters kept changing.
Kuo vehemently denied receiving the bribe.
The supposed US$20,000 bribe has not been traced and there is no material evidence of its existence.
However, the judges, exercising their judicial discretion, did not find any of this to be problematic and convicted Kuo.
Compare this case with that of former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator and Executive Yuan secretary-general Lin Yi-shih (林益世).
Chen Chi-hsiang (陳啟祥), owner of scrap metal company Dih Yeon, testified that Lin had accepted a bribe of NT$63 million from him and then demanded a further NT$83 million.
Chen presented evidence in the form of a microcassette recording of Lin making this demand.
Lin confessed to prosecutors from the now-defunct Special Investigation Division of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office and made a declaration in which he admitted his wrongdoing and apologized.
Investigators also retrieved NT$65 million from a pond on the grounds of Lin’s house.
However, exercising judicial discretion, the judges in Lin’s first-instance trial at the Taipei District Court found that this was not a matter of corruption and that Lin had only committed the offense of gaining benefit through intimidation.
It is indeed worrying that judges should exercise their discretion in a manner that disregards the presence or absence of evidence.
Second, what can be done about a judiciary that will not face up to its faults?
Although it has taken Yen a long time to lodge an extraordinary appeal in Kuo’s case, it is at least a first step toward setting things right.
Unfortunately, Yen fails to recognize that the key problem lies at the outset with the absence of evidence of a bribe having been offered and accepted, and not at the later stage of differing definitions of what constitutes a quid pro quo, or give-and-take, in bribery.
The verbose statement that “courts have differing definitions of what constitutes a quid pro quo in bribery, so hopefully the Supreme Court can make a unified interpretation” strays far from the key issue and exposes the judiciary’s unwillingness to face up to unjust, false and mistaken cases.
Instead of tackling the fundamental question of evidence, the judiciary is instead buzzing around the secondary question of a “unified interpretation.”
Similarly, judicial reform efforts are not getting to grips with fundamental problems, such as how to prevent young and socially inexperienced people from becoming judges, how to root out prosecutors and judges who apply double standards and act as henchmen by charging and trying pan-green figures, but letting pan-blue ones off the hook, and how to set up a system for “dinosaur” judges to retire.
Instead, those involved are only trying to put old wine in new wineskins.
Considering a survey that public non-confidence in judges and prosecutors stands at 84 percent and 76 percent respectively, what can be done to make some real changes?
Third, how can prosecutors and judges who wield power without responsibility uphold the quality of the judiciary? Some people are not charged, even though there is much clearer factual, material and witness evidence against them than there is against those who are charged, so what can be done about prosecutors who abuse their powers by charging or not charging, as the case may be?
We see people being found guilty even though they are more innocent than those who are found not guilty, so what can be done about judges who come to such inexplicable and erroneous verdicts?
In the workplace, physicians who make wrong diagnoses or administer the wrong treatment can expect to be sued.
Media pundits who spout all kinds of allegations without any proof to back them up can be fined or made to pay newspapers to print their apologies. Merchants who sell fake goods and counterfeit medicines can be fined or jailed.
However, what about the prosecutors and judges whose actions led to the unjust execution of Chiang Kuo-ching (江國慶)? Have they ever been held responsible for their actions?
What about prosecutors who maliciously prosecute people without presenting evidence and those who induce witnesses to perjure themselves? Making false accusations is an offense, but what about malicious prosecution?
Since reforms must challenge privilege, authority and hegemony, how can they be implemented without offending anyone? How can people who need to be reformed and those who oppose reform be invited to attend meetings where they will only commiserate with one another? Can such people be expected to stop obstructing, start helping and come to a common understanding about reform?
If you gather a crowd of retired military personnel, civil servants and teachers with vested interests in the existing pension system to discuss pension reform, of course you will only hear thunderous opposition, while other ordinary people who want to see reform will have no channel or stage to express their views and can only shake their heads in dismay.
Similarly, there is a crowd of notorious political hatchet men in the judiciary who ought to be targets of judicial reform, but instead of having to stand aside and wait to be purged, they are having a field day, standing up one after another in the preparatory committee and subcommittees of the National Congress on Judicial Reform and dominating the judicial reform issues.
With “doctors” such as these, what kind of “prescriptions” can we expect from the judicial reform congress? People who long for reform might wake up and find their dreams have come to nothing.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired associate professor at National Hsinchu University of Education and a former deputy secretary-general of the Taiwan Association of University Professors.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs