The Judicial Yuan yesterday finalized a bill that would allow authorities to detain certain convicts prior to them beginning their prison sentences in the wake of two convicted former lawmakers failing to show up to begin serving their prison terms.
The Judicial Yuan said it completed an amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) suggested by the Ministry of Justice that would give prosecutors the power to issue arrest warrants for those found guilty in final verdicts and who are sentenced to prison terms of more than two years, as soon as the sentence is handed down.
The bill is to be sent to the Executive Yuan for approval, before being sent to the legislature.
The Judicial Yuan said the ministry had suggested prosecutors be allowed to monitor convicts awaiting a final verdict using electronic tags and other means, but as no consensus had been reached on that issue, the Judicial Yuan did not include it in the amendment.
Under the current system, prosecutors have to summon convicted individuals who are not in detention at the time of sentencing.
If a person fails to report to the prosecutors’ office to begin serving a sentence, prosecutors issue an arrest warrant.
However, the gap between the time of conviction and imprisonment provides a gray area which convicts can take advantage of.
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker Chiang Lien-fu (江連福) and former independent lawmaker Lo Fu-chu (羅福助), who were convicted in unrelated cases, failed to report to prosecutors to start serving prison sentences last month and they have not been seen since.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching