Taiwan’s first trial with the participation of “citizen judges” began on Tuesday at the New Taipei City District Court, and the verdict was quickly delivered on Friday, opening a new chapter in the nation’s judicial system while inevitably bringing new problems and challenges.
On Monday, the court completed the selection of citizen judges by picking six citizen judges and four alternate judges from the 57 prospective judges present. For the selection, what deserves greater attention is the rejection rate of candidates who were legally notified of their candidacy, especially the percentage of those who did not respond.
Article 99, Paragraph 2 of the Citizen Judges Act (國民法官法) states that a prospective citizen judge may be fined not more than NT$30,000 for “being absent on the citizen judges selection date without a justifiable reason after having been lawfully summoned.” The court would not easily impose a fine when the citizen judge system is newly established.
However, the citizen judge selection might be too narrow if candidates’ rejection rate is too high, thus contravening the principle of universality.
Next, since trials with citizen judges must proceed in a concentrated and efficient manner, the period of each trial is three days.
However, the Citizen Judges Act adopts the “indictment-only” principle, meaning that to prevent any pretrial judgement, prosecutors only submit the indictment, without the evidence, to the court when he indicts someone.
However, this also means that all the content and evidence of the case can only be presented during the three-day trial period. How citizen judges, who sit on the judgement seats for the first time in their lives, can quickly absorb the evidence presented by prosecutors and the defense, and the statements made by the witnesses and expert witnesses in just three days is a serious issue.
In the case before the New Taipei City District Court — which involved a Taiwanese wife who killed her husband saying that he had abused her — it was necessary to consider whether the wife who had been allegedly abused for years really had the “capacity for responsibility” for her action at the time of the act.
Since this difficult task involved a forensic psychiatric evaluation, it was a big challenge for citizen judges to quickly grasp the information and determine the wife’s criminal responsibility quickly. Under such circumstances, the prosecutor, lawyer and even experts should present the difficult legal terms and relevant professional knowledge in a simple way to be understood by citizen judges.
Lastly, the judges’ final deliberation after the final argument in court might be an even greater challenge. During the first three years of the implementation of the Citizen Judges Act, trials involving citizen judges are to be limited to certain categories, including cases “where the accused has intentionally committed an offense that caused death.” So the jury is often to face the crimes of intentional homicide in trials. For such crimes, the argument lies in whether the defendant has the “capacity of responsibility” and whether to impose the death penalty. In terms of a verdict of guilty or a decision of death penalty, it is rendered “by the approval of the tribunal with a two-thirds majority, including at least one judge and one citizen judge.”
However, with three judges and six citizen judges deliberating together, and with the former having the exclusive authority of legal interpretation, how can we strike a balance between professional legal assistance and independence of citizen judges’ judgement, so as to prevent them from becoming rubber stamps? This is an critical test for judicial reform.
Wu Ching-chin is an associate law professor at Aletheia University.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry gives it a strategic advantage, but that advantage would be threatened as the US seeks to end Taiwan’s monopoly in the industry and as China grows more assertive, analysts said at a security dialogue last week. While the semiconductor industry is Taiwan’s “silicon shield,” its dominance has been seen by some in the US as “a monopoly,” South Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University academic Kwon Seok-joon said at an event held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In addition, Taiwan lacks sufficient energy sources and is vulnerable to natural disasters and geopolitical threats from China, he said.
After reading the article by Hideki Nagayama [English version on same page] published in the Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) on Wednesday, I decided to write this article in hopes of ever so slightly easing my depression. In August, I visited the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan, to attend a seminar. While there, I had the chance to look at the museum’s collections. I felt extreme annoyance at seeing that the museum had classified Taiwanese indigenous peoples as part of China’s ethnic minorities. I kept thinking about how I could make this known, but after returning
What value does the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hold in Taiwan? One might say that it is to defend — or at the very least, maintain — truly “blue” qualities. To be truly “blue” — without impurities, rejecting any “red” influence — is to uphold the ideology consistent with that on which the Republic of China (ROC) was established. The KMT would likely not object to this notion. However, if the current generation of KMT political elites do not understand what it means to be “blue” — or even light blue — their knowledge and bravery are far too lacking
Taipei’s population is estimated to drop below 2.5 million by the end of this month — the only city among the nation’s six special municipalities that has more people moving out than moving in this year. A city that is classified as a special municipality can have three deputy mayors if it has a population of more than 2.5 million people, Article 55 of the Local Government Act (地方制度法) states. To counter the capital’s shrinking population, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) held a cross-departmental population policy committee meeting on Wednesday last week to discuss possible solutions. According to Taipei City Government data, Taipei’s