The Control Yuan is to open an inquiry to determine if there was any negligence by judicial officials and court bailiffs after a US citizen, who had been a long-term resident of Taiwan, killed himself in a courtroom in Changhua County on Thursday.
Two members of the Control Yuan, Lin Ya-feng (林雅鋒) and Yang Mei-ling (楊美鈴), are to conduct the probe into the incident in which the American, identified as 41-year-old Tyrel Martin Marhanka, who was married to a Taiwanese and had two children, reportedly committed suicide with a pair of scissors upon being convicted of possessing marijuana and handed a four-year prison term at the Changhua District Court.
Lin and Yang said in a statement that there were misgivings that the security checks and safety procedures at the court were not carried out thoroughly and that they would investigate whether the duties and responsibilities of the judicial officials involved had been performed adequately.
“The inquiry will also look into the installation of security equipment at the Changhua District Court, its operation and whether it had been regularly maintained. It will try to find out if the court bailiffs on duty conducted the security screening correctly and if they had received sufficient training, as well as if they had the capability to react to contingency situations,” the statement said.
The Control Yuan is the nation’s top regulatory authority, and has the powers of impeachment, censure and audit over all government agencies and civil servants.
The Judicial Yuan, the nation’s highest judicial authority, also issued a statement in which it said it had asked the Ministry of Justice to conduct a comprehensive review of courtroom security and safety measures, “as we must prevent such an incident from happening again.”
“The court system has regulations and procedures on handling of suspects and detainees. Regarding the incident, the responsible body must undergo an evaluation of how to improve and implement security checks and related procedures,” the Judicial Yuan’s statement said.
Judge Wang Yi-min (王義閔), who was in the courtroom when the incident took place, said Marhanka had been cooperative during the year-long pretrial hearings and had not shown any tendency for violence and that was why the court bailiffs did not conduct a pat-down body search when they led the American into the courtroom and directed him to his seat.
Wang said the courtroom is an old building and it has metal detectors at its two entrances, but no X-ray scanning equipment.
“It seems the two metal detectors have different sensitivity levels. Maybe the man walked through the door which had the less sensitive detector and it was unable to detect the scissors, which he had hidden inside a magazine,” Wang said.
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