The Constitutional Court on Friday ruled unconstitutional the search and seizure of confidential messages shared between lawyers and their clients during a prosecutors’ investigation, and ordered that the law be amended within two years.
The ruling on Articles 122-2 and 133-1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) came after Lee and Li Attorneys-at-Law challenged the constitutionality of the clauses, when its Hsinchu branch office was raided and messages between staff and clients were seized by prosecutors in a 2011 litigation case.
The law firm said that the prosecutors’ actions had infringed on its right to keep communication with its clients confidential, especially as prosecutors at the time could not prove that the office had committed any wrongdoing to justify their search.
Photo: Taipei Times file
Under the two articles, the premises or properties of any third -party can be searched only if there is probable cause.
A seizure that is not covered by a search warrant must be adjudicated by a judge, except when the item is seized for evidence, the articles say.
The court’s ruling said that the articles fail to take into consideration the attorney-client privilege, which is a rule that protects the confidentiality of communication between lawyers and clients.
The content of the two articles works against Articles 15 and 16 of the Constitution, which stipulate that “the right of existence, the right of work and the right of property shall be guaranteed to the people,” and that “the people shall have the right of presenting petitions, lodging complaints or instituting legal proceedings,” the ruling said.
Agencies should amend the Code of Criminal Procedure within two years, the court said, adding that before the revision of the law is completed, judges and prosecutors should conduct searches and seizures in accordance with the intention of the judgement.
The number of search warrants issued by Taiwanese courts from 2020 to last year averaged nearly 15,000 per year, Constitutional Court head clerk Hsu Chen-chou (許辰舟) said.
During this three-year period, 20 law firms have been searched, of which 18 were due to lawyers having become criminal suspects or because they were involved in collusion to destroy evidence, Hsu said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS