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Lawyers unhappy about inconsistent sentencing

Law professors and researchers yesterday said sentences for theft were inconsistent or unfair.

The Judicial Reform Foundation also urged the Judicial Yuan to establish a new office to identify inequalities in sentencing for cases of theft and to provide this information to judges as points of reference when processing theft cases in future.

The foundation was discussing a study conducted by National Taiwan University Professor Wang Chao-peng (王兆鵬), National Taipei University Assistant Professor Lin Ding-hsiang (林定香) and Academia Sinica Institute of Sociology Director Yang Wen-shan (楊文山) at a press conference yesterday.

The researchers analyzed 1,164 cases of theft processed at 18 district courts between January 2000 and March 2002.

The foundation's executive general, Shirley Lin (林靜萍), said that judges enjoyed considerable power in reaching their verdicts because there was no jury system.

However, Lin said, this also resulted in a significant human rights problem because it was impossible for the public to know, in the absence of sentencing guidelines, whether judges were abusing their authority in deciding verdicts and sentences for the accused.

Under these circumstances, Lin said, it was important for judges to have access to some form of standard when it came to sentencing to ensure parity in the system.

"Since the law does not provide any standard regarding the severity of sentences for those convicted of theft, the conviction of suspects in theft cases can be affected by the age, gender and location of the judge," Lin said.

"It's all up to the judge how long the convicted person should be put away. However, it may not be a fair sentence," she said.

The researchers found that judges usually do not give lengthy stretches in jail to thieves, especially "first timers," since theft cases were not regarded to be serious criminal cases.

It was also found that males usually received heavier sentences than females, and that judges in larger urban areas usually gave longer sentences to thieves than judges in rural areas.

"These are significant findings worthy of further investigation," Lin said.

"However, the research should be conducted by an independent government agency, with the results possibly acting as a point of reference for judges," she said.
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