The Council of Grand Justices has rejected a petition for a constitutional interpretation filed by Tainan Council Speaker Lee Chuan-chiao (李全教), dashing Lee’s attempts to overturn last month’s guilty verdict by a local court on vote-buying charges, and he is likely to be stripped of his post.
The Council of Grand Justices said Lee’s petition did not present concrete evidence that a clause regarding conflicts of interest for judges in the Code of Civil Procedure (民事訴訟法) contravened the Constitution, so it did not qualify for a constitutional interpretation.
Lee, a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), was accused of buying votes from fellow councilors in the Dec. 25, 2014, speakership election.
Photo: Hung Jui-chin, Taipei Times
The Tainan District Court on April 22 found him guilty of vote-buying, sentencing him to a four-year prison term and a five-year deprivation of civic rights.
Lee said in his petition that one of the judges on the court’s collegiate bench was Wang San-ho (王參和), the husband of Tsai Li-yi (蔡麗宜), a superior of the prosecutor who filed the vote-buying charges.
“Since Tsai had a supervisory position and had authority over prosecutors at the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office and because Wang and Tsai were husband and wife, Wang should not have presided over the case to avoid a conflict of interest and prejudice in the decisionmaking process,” Lee said.
The petition requested a constitutional interpretation of the affected clause because there is no definition of conflict of interest regarding situations of “effective work supervision and authority” stipulating judges must refrain from presiding over such cases.
Legal experts said that Tsai at the time was spokesperson for the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office and that she was not the prosecutor handling Lee’s case, and therefore the law does not stipulate a conflict of interest and there is no such precedent in the nation’s judiciary.
They also said that in legal circles, there are numerous spouses working as court judges, prosecutors and other judiciary officials.
There have been cases in which the prosecutor and judge were married, but when an indictment was brought, most of the time the judge cited a conflict of interest and refrained from presiding over the case.
The legislature on Friday passed amendments to the Local Government Act (地方制度法) requiring speakers and deputy speakers of local councils to be elected by open ballot.
The amendment was widely considered the “Lee Chuan-chiao clause,” due to the prominence of the vote-buying allegations and charges against Lee.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique