The Constitutional Court on Monday said in a judgement that a rule governing how appeals in criminal cases are allotted to Supreme Court judges does not violate the Constitution, narrowing hopes for retrials for 35 people on death row.
Fifty-two people, including 35 people who have been sentenced to death, requested an interpretation of the Supreme Court’s case allotment rules, which stipulate that serious criminal cases appealed to the Supreme Court after being sent back to lower courts at least twice must be heard by the same judge who heard them previously, unless that judge has left the court.
The rule is intended to ensure that appeals do not take too long by having a presiding judge who is familiar with the case.
Photo: CNA
The petitioners argued that the rule contravened their constitutional right to a fair trial.
However, the Constitutional Court said that requiring the same judge to hear such cases did not contravene the right to appeal as stipulated in Article 16 of the Constitution.
Judges should recuse themselves if they are selected to hear an appeal of a case in which they have previously participated in issuing a verdict, it added.
The Constitutional Court gave the legislature two years to amend recusal laws in the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法).
If the court had ruled in favor of the petitioners, the 35 people on death row who had cases allotted according to the rule might have been eligible for retrials.
In related news, the Ministry of Justice on Monday said that it was currently unable to carry out executions, as the 38 people on death row have a separate petition pending before the Constitutional Court.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying
RSS