The Judicial Yuan yesterday unveiled proposed rules to govern the broadcast of court proceedings amid a partisan debate over the transparency and autonomy of the justice system.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers in June passed amendments to the Court Organization Act (法院組織法) mandating that some criminal trials be recorded and publicly broadcast.
The opposition-driven changes stipulate that district court and High Court proceedings be withheld from public scrutiny in principle, but could be broadcast in video form under special circumstances, while video of Supreme Court and Constitutional Court proceedings could be withheld from public viewing under special circumstances.
Photo: Yang Kuo-wen, Taipei Times
The changes allow litigants to apply to have their trials broadcast should their case concern the public interest or elicit the attention of society at large.
The Judicial Yuan proposed regulations to enact the changes, including measures to shield litigants and court officers from undue pressure and threats to their privacy.
The courts are authorized to refuse broadcasting trials if they would jeopardize their fairness or the credibility of the judicial system, or if a line of investigation uncovers matters unsuitable for broadcast, the regulations said.
The proposed rules stipulate that video recordings of court procedures must utilize a fixed angle, prohibiting zoomed-in images of litigants or shots that show the faces of lay judges.
The courts may schedule the recordings for public release following the conclusion of the trials, the proposed rules state.
Both sides of a litigation would be entitled to oppose a motion to broadcast the trial, and the court’s ruling on the matter cannot be appealed.
The court would also be authorized to obscure or otherwise anonymize any video or audio recordings before publication to protect the reputation and privacy of people involved in a trial upon request, the proposed rules say.
Lawyer Chen Chun-wei (陳君瑋) said the TPP appeared to have passed the amendments in a bid to rescue former TPP chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) from legal woes by mobilizing public opinion.
The amendments overlooked the problem that any legal case touching on important issues of public interest would lead to controversial trials, which require stringent protections for the privacy of litigants, witnesses and judges, he said.
Legal professionals broadly oppose the bill, as it poses a grave risk to the integrity of court proceedings and the right to a fair trial, lawyer Fang Yen-hui (房彥輝) said.
The judiciary’s rules aim to reduce that harm, he said.
Once published, recordings of court proceedings could be manipulated by third parties, or potentially used to exact revenge on witnesses and officers of the court, Fang said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chuang Jui-hsiung (莊瑞雄), convener of the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee, said his party and the legal profession sought to stop the nation’s courts from being turned into political theaters.
The law that KMT and TPP lawmakers originally conceived would have compromised the privacy of juvenile defendants, victims of sex crimes and other vulnerable people, he said.
KMT caucus deputy secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said the party had no objections to publishing recordings of legal proceedings after the court renders a verdict.
The justice system should take care to respect the principle of transparency to ensure that Taiwanese interested in legal cases have access to appropriate information, he said.
TPP caucus deputy whip Chang Chi-kai (張?楷) panned the Judicial Yuan’s proposal, saying that officials were seeking to block lawmakers’ intention of bringing transparency to the system.
Publishing the recordings of courtroom proceedings after a trial is finished would allow the government to doctor the content, he said.
Foreign courts that allow the broadcast of court proceedings do so in real time and without placing limits on the content, Chang added.
Additional reporting by Yang Kuo-wen, Hsieh Chun-lin and Lin Che-yuan
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