Minister's words upset prosecutors

Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) said yesterday that in order to prevent prosecutors from abusing their powers, they may be investigated if indictments for which they are responsible do not result in convictions.

The remarks sparked criticism from prosecutors and academics.

Chen later altered his words but still failed to calm the voices of opposition. Critics said such a measure, if implemented, would seriously discourage prosecutors in their battle against crime.

Chen made the remarks in a breakfast meeting with cross-party lawmakers from the group New Taiwan Political Alliance (新台灣問政聯盟). During the meeting legislators complained that many prosecutors went as far as to violate human rights in their pursuit of cases.

They said that prosecutors must shoulder the responsibility when people are wrongly indicted.

Chen responded that in future prosecutors may be held responsible if the Supreme Court acquits defendants they indicted or if they cited the wrong legal articles when making the indictments.

Albert Tsai (蔡秋明), a divisional head prosecutor at Panchiao District Prosecutors' Office, said such measures would be inappropriate.

"The criteria according to which a prosecutor can indict, and a judge can convict a person, are different. A prosecutor can indict when there is criminal suspicion, while a conviction must be beyond reasonable doubt," Tsai said. "Prosecutors would become too strict [about evidence] and too discouraged from indicting suspects if they risked being held responsible just because the Supreme Court acquitted the defendants."

Besides, Tsai said, evidence and the cases themselves may change during the investigation and trial. For example, he said, in some disputes the complainants and the accused may reach a settlement after the indictment.

He stressed that the courts could also make mistakes and that an acquittal did not necessarily imply the innocence of the defendant or any error on the part of the prosecution.

He said it might be less unacceptable if the justice ministry set some standards -- other than acquittal by the Supreme Court -- to judge whether the prosecutors had abused their powers in making indictments. However, he also said such standards were extremely hard to set.

Tsai's comments came before the ministry issued a press release to backtrack on Chen's words in the afternoon. The press release said that Chen did not mean that in all cases of Supreme Court acquittals the indicting prosecutors should be investigated.

The press statement said that this would only be necessary when "there are serious procedural flaws and obvious incorrect citations of laws which cause grave harm to the rights of the defendants."

The statement said that there had not been enough time for Chen to go into specifics when meeting with the legislators in the morning.

Certain questions remained unanswered, however.

"In what circumstances, then, would an investigation be launched?" asked Chen Jui-jen (陳瑞仁), a Shihlin District prosecutor and spokesman for the Prosecutors' Reform Association (檢察官改革協會). "Whenever the defendants are acquitted by the Supreme Court? Or only when the defendants make some form of complaint?

"If it were the former, it would add tremendously to the workload of both investigators and the investigated."

Chen said there were already effective mechanisms in place preventing prosecutors from abusing powers.