A woman in Pingtung County surnamed Chu (朱) has been fined NT$1,000 by the Pingtung District Court for stealing scallions grown by her neighbor.
Although Chu committed what some might consider a minor crime, because the victim — a woman surnamed Yin (尹) — had often experienced theft, she could not forgive her, Pingtung Chief District Prosecutor Chen Yi-li (陳怡利) said on June 5.
As the two parties had not reached a settlement, the prosecutor requested a summary sentence after taking into consideration the defendant’s attitude and the victim’s feelings, Chen said, adding that the value of the stolen vegetable was not the main basis for the judgement.
Photo: Lee Li-fa, Taipei Times
The case dates to July last year, when Yin called the police after discovering that scallions she had planted in front of her house were being stolen.
The police checked footage from a surveillance camera at an intersection and found someone had parked a motorcycle in front of Yin’s home and left after pulling up a plant.
After tracing the vehicle’s license plate, police identified the rider as Chu, who lives across from Yin.
According to the court’s ruling, which was issued on Feb. 26, the fine can be commuted to community service.
Some legal experts said that the prosecutor should not have brought charges or should have deferred prosecution, arguing that there is no need to consume judicial resources on such a minor incident.
The court could have granted probation and given the defendant a chance to correct her mistake, they said.
Prosecutors should make good use of discretion allowed by the law in such minor crimes, they said.
Prosecutors are granted discretion to not prosecute a case under Article 253 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法).
The article says that if a prosecutor deems it appropriate not to prosecute a case, as described in subparagraphs of the first paragraph of Article 376, they may issue a disposition of dismissal, after taking into consideration items in Article 57 of the Criminal Code, which include motive, purpose and means of the offense, among other issues.
The offenses described in Article 376 include ones that carry a maximum penalty of less than three years in prison or a fine, including larceny, embezzlement, fraud, breach of trust, extortion and accepting stolen property.
Yin called the police because she was upset, members of her family said, adding that they were surprised when Chu was identified.
As they are neighbors, Chu could have asked if she wanted scallions, they said, adding that it was not up to them how prosecutors and the court handled the case.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the