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FEATURE: Crime suspects to get more rights

People's legal rights could soon be enhanced thanks to two new measures allowing attorneys to play a greater role during prosecution.

The Ministry of Justice said earlier this month that prison security guards would no longer tape or film meetings between attorneys and their clients while in custody.

The new measure would maintain a suspect's privacy and human rights, the ministry said.

Director of the ministry's Department of Prosecutorial Affairs Chiang Hui-ming (江惠民) said the ministry came up with the measures following a proposal by attorney associations.

The Legal Aid Foundation began its "First Criminal Interrogation Accompanied by Legal Aid Attorney" program in September to provide a channel for individuals requiring attorneys. The program was expanded last month.

Under the program, low income individuals or those with mental disabilities who are questioned as suspects in 15 district police offices nationwide can apply to receive pro bono representation by attorneys from the Legal Aid Foundation.

The foundation said it was promoting a law allowing all individuals to request the presence of an attorney during interrogation by police and prosecutors, in keeping with the spirit of the presumption of innocence and egalitarianism under the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法).

Legal Aid Foundation chairwoman Ku Den-mei (古登美) said that because the first step in the interrogation of a suspect is administered by police -- and therefore before the suspect has been brought to a prosecutors' office for further questioning and possible detention -- the initial interrogation plays a crucial role in the process of a criminal investigation.

As a result, if attorneys were able to accompany a suspect during interrogation at a police station, the suspects' rights would be protected and it would make it easier for prosecutors to uncover the facts.

As interrogation is a decisive factor in indictment and subsequent legal procedures, certain longstanding cases have been bogged down because of debate concerning the courtroom admissibility of interrogation records, she said. Not only is this a waste of legal and social resources, she said, but it also leads to a loss of public confidence in the validity of court verdicts.

Meanwhile, Judicial Reform Foundation president Lin Feng-jeng (林峰正) said that a couple of attorney foundations were promoting a "third wave" of public legal rights through the prevention of police abuse of suspects.

Lin said that in the 1980s an amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure allowed a defendant to hire an attorney during an investigation by prosecutors rather than only in a courtroom. This marked the first wave in efforts to prevent the abuse of suspects.

The second leg of reform, in 1997, occurred when another amendment to the Code was made, which stipulated that police and prosecutorial interrogation must be audio or video-recorded.

The third leg of reform is the promotion of a law whereby police, prosecutorial and court interrogations are all conducted in the presence of a defense attorney, which would provide better protection to suspects, he said.

However, some investigators believe the presence of a defense attorney during police interrogation could have a negative impact on an investigation.

Chang Hsueh-ming (張學明), lead prosecutor at the Kaohsiung branch of the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office, said that as the initial interrogation plays a decisive role in the unfolding of an investigation, the presence of an attorney would allow suspects to remain calmer and bolder, which could help them hide the truth from police.

Yeh Ming-ter (葉銘德), a senior Kaohsiung police officer, said that while abuse of suspects during interrogation was rampant in the 1990s, police officers had since become more aware of human rights standards and that abuse had become rare, especially after interrogations started being recorded.
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