In response to growing criticism of the police practice of coercing confessions from suspects, the Taipei District Court recently acquitted a defendant of theft charges on grounds that his confessions were made "involuntarily."
In his decision to acquit Han Chen-chuan (
According to the court, in February 1999, Han was arrested by police while driving the stolen car in northern Taipei. His confessions obtained during police interrogations provided the sole evidence against him, but the man claimed he had been coerced by the police to confess during the following trial. In addition, the accused claimed he had borrowed the car from his brother that day when his own car broke down.
After examining tape recordings of the interrogations, the judge said he found the man was speaking in a very "unnatural" tone.
"It sounds like the man was merely reading transcripts that the police had produced in advance, and we don't know for sure he did it on his own free will," the judge decided.
"Since there is no guarantee that the confessions were extracted lawfully, I have decided to deny the legality of the confessions, which I believe will help to correct this common but unlawful practice of evidence-gathering," the judge stated.
Defendants' confessions used to be regarded as the "king of evidence," at a time when the skills and technology employed by police conducting criminal investigations were inadequate. Nevertheless, to this day defendants' confessions made during police interrogations still carry a lot weight in decisions on whether to convict them.
Legal changes were made in 1997 to facilitate the establishment of basic protections for criminal suspects, including the introduction of a Miranda-style warning, the prohibition of exhaustive questioning, and the requirement for making audio and video recordings of the interrogation process.
However, Yeh pointed out that police authorities have not been thorough in implementing these changes, and that they still act in violation of defendants' rights. He stressed that the strict rules are meant to prevent any unlawfulness in police practices and to spur on the development of a changed mindset among police officers to match the legal changes.
Currently the police are required by law to record the whole process of interrogations, but in reality the police sometimes extract defendants' statements without recording them and then have them read the transcripts which are recorded afterwards.
An official from the Bureau of Criminal Investigation explained yesterday that the police think this practice saves time and makes the statements "perfect." He insisted, however, it would not affect the truthfulness of statements.
In view of frequent violations of human rights during police interrogations, Sue Wang (王時思), executive-general of the Judicial Reform Foundation (民間司法改革基金會), said the foundation has advocated that police no longer have to produce the transcripts. Instead, police should file investigation reports based on their own discoveries of evidence so that defendants' rights can be protected.
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