Taxi driver's name cleared

A taxi driver who had been sentenced to 13 years for attempted rape had his acquittal upheld by the Supreme Court yesterday, with the assistance of testimony from police officers.

Lo Tsan-jung (羅讚榮), of Taipei County, had been convicted of attempting to rape a female passenger and robbing her of NT$10,000 on the morning of Feb. 22, 1995.

At the time, there had been several cases of taxi drivers raping female passengers, and Lo had been branded by police as the serial offender in these cases.

But the Taiwan High Court determined in 1998 that Lo was not guilty on grounds of a lack of evidence.

The Supreme Court affirmed the high court ruling yesterday.

The development came as a great relief for the 44-year-old man and his wife, who has made persistent efforts to prove Lo's innocence. The two said they believed the testimony of two police officers had substantially influenced the outcome of the case.

Chang Yi-tang (張意唐) and Wang Chao-ko (王昭科), two agents from the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, voluntarily testified during the trial in support of Lo after discovering disparities between Lo and a profile they had compiled on the offender.

Chang and Wang in 1994 and 1995 had investigated the taxi-driver rape cases.

They discovered that the rapes followed a similar pattern. The rapist would steal a taxi and use it to pick up female passengers. After raping his victim he would abandon the car near the place he had stolen it from.

Based on their findings, they determined that Lo, along with a number of other taxi drivers, had been wrongfully charged.

When Lo's wife, in tears, turned to them for help, they decided to testify for Lo in court.

Following the attempted rape on Feb. 22, 1995, the victim filed a complaint and police arrested Lo on the same day on the basis of the victim's recollection of the name on the taxi driver's license and the registration number of the car.

Lo pleaded not guilty and claimed he had been asleep at home when the alleged crime was committed. He said, in addition, that his car had been moved and broken into that morning. He also said he found chewed betel nut in the vehicle, but that he was not a betel nut chewer.

Though she remembered seeing Lo's taxi license and registration number, the victim could not be sure that Lo was the offender when she faced him in court.

The court found that although the victim had positively identified Lo previously, she had done so from the second floor of the police station while Lo stood on the street outside and the distance may have impaired her vision.

The police said that they had adopted this method of identification in order to protect the victim.