The High Court yesterday rejected a request for a retrial of the case of air force staff sergeant Tsai Hsueh-liang (蔡學良), who died in 2008 of a gunshot wound to the head, with his family and supporters disputing military authorities’ initial claim that it was a suicide.
Tsai’s mother, Yu Jui-min (尤瑞敏), and advocates of judicial reform staged a protest outside the High Court in Taipei, decrying the court’s decision to overlook new evidence.
Yu has for the past 12 years fought to clear her son’s name and find out the truth behind his death. Tsai died during target practice on a shooting range on May 9, 2008.
Photo: CNA
Yu and her lawyer on March 9 presented new evidence — a re-examination of the autopsy reports and ballistic tests by weapons experts and forensic doctors at National Taiwan University College of Medicine — and filed for a retrial with the High Court’s civil division.
The court rejected the request, saying the 30-day period for presenting new evidence to seek a retrial, as stated in the Code of Civil Procedures (民事訴訟法), had been exceeded.
Presiding Judge Chen Jung-cheng (陳容正) said that Tsai’s family had received the new test results on Jan. 16, but did not file a lawsuit until March 9.
Chen said that the judicial panel sympathizes with Tsai’s mother and her long struggle to appeal the case.
“The judicial panel understands and feels her pain and suffering over the death of her son... However, the request for a retrial does not conform with legal procedures, and has therefore been turned down,” Chen said.
Yu and her lawyer, Wu Yung-mao (吳永茂), disputed the High Court’s explanation, saying they had received the new autopsy and ballistic test results on Feb. 10 and filed for a retrial on March 9.
Several judicial reform advocates decried what they said was the callous and condescending tone adopted by Chen when announcing the decision on behalf of the judicial panel.
Breaking down in tears, Yu said that Chen could never imagine the pain and suffering she has experienced.
“This decision is very unfair and unreasonable. We cannot accept it,” she said.
“These past 12 years, we had to take on the painstaking task of finding the truth, of looking for new evidence. Why was it left to the victim’s family, and why do ordinary people have no right to request a judicial investigation?” Yu asked.
Former judge and prosecutor Chang Ching (張靜), an adviser to the Judicial Reform Foundation, decried the court’s decision.
“We had already asked for ballistic tests when the case first went to trial, but no judicial authorities, including the courts and prosecutors, would agree to conduct the ballistic tests we asked for,” Chang said.
Saying she was certain her son would not commit suicide, Yu sued the air force, seeking NT$6 million (US$202,662) in compensation, but lost in a ruling by a lower court, which concurred with the military that Tsai had committed suicide using his own provisioned T65 rifle.
In 2015, after reviewing the autopsy and weapons reports, the High Court concluded that Tsai was killed at close range by a handgun and ruled that it was death by accident.
It ordered the air force to pay NT$1.48 million in compensation to Yu.
However, Yu believes that her son was bullied by his colleagues, and that one of them shot him during the target practice.
Tsai at the time was serving at the 954th Brigade under the Air Defense Artillery Command near the air force base in Hualien County.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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