People found guilty of causing minor injury or some drug-related offenses would no longer be entitled to appeal their case to the Supreme Court after a second trial following amendments passed by the legislature on Tuesday to address a judicial backlog.
The amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) say that assault that inflicts bodily harm to another, as defined in the first paragraph of Article 277 of the Criminal Code, would not be appealable to the Supreme Court.
Furthermore, ingesting Category 1 drugs or possessing more than 20g of a Category 2 drug would also be unappealable after a second-instance judgement is issued, the amendments say.
Photo: Chang Wen-chuan, Taipei Times
With the changes, 10 types of criminal cases would not be heard by the Supreme Court, up from seven, which were larceny, embezzlement, fraud, breach of trust, extortion, receiving stolen property or an offense with a sentence of three years or less.
The revision is expected to decrease the number of criminal matters appealed to the Supreme Court to 500 to 600 per year, a judge who asked to remain anonymous told reporters by telephone on Wednesday.
A judge at the Supreme Court was responsible for an average of 13.6 cases per month in 2015, but in 2021 the average was 19.8, a 45 percent increase, the judge said.
As of April, the Supreme Court had 1,239 unresolved cases, 58 of which had been pending for more than a year, court data showed.
Trials for the three offenses that were affected by the amendments do not usually involve issues of application or interpretation of the law, the judge added.
For example, heroin identified in a urine test is a relatively straightforward issue to deal with, they said.
If judges at the Supreme Court are not given such cases, resources can be put to better use in more complicated cases, they added.
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