At the last High Court trial, a team of lawyers from the nonprofit Legal Aid Foundation’s Taipei and Banciao branches joined the defense counsel and raised several issues, including an alibi indicating that Chiou and his codefendants were not in Hsinchu at the time of Lu’s kidnapping.
The court nevertheless upheld the convictions on April 13. The case then went before the Supreme Court, which ordered a retrial on Aug. 6.
In a joint statement with other civic groups on Monday, the Judicial Reform Foundation said: “The key issue is this ... Despite the lack of evidence, the judges are not willing to [honor] the most basic of judicial principles: the presumption of innocence.”
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