Legislative Speaker You Si-kun (游錫堃) on Friday adjourned a contentious discussion among legislative caucuses over a bill for citizen participation in criminal court procedures, although the talks are to resume tomorrow.
At the time of adjournment, only 35 of 113 articles for the proposed lay judge system — which would place six lay judges alongside a panel of three official judges — were addressed, and only two were agreed upon.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) and New Power Party (NPP) caucus whip Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智) said the bill, which would significantly affect the judicial process, should not be rushed during an extraordinary legislative session.
Screen grab from the Legislative Yuan Parliamentary TV Web site
However, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus said that “the time for reform has come,” and urged those involved to review the proposal item by item.
The meeting was rife with disagreements on terminology and the contents of the bill, as well as on the name of the proposed act.
Although the Judicial Yuan, which proposed the bill, has called it the “citizen participation in criminal trial procedures act,” the DPP caucus proposed naming it the “national judge act,” removing words, such as “participation,” that it says might not fit the final language of the bill.
The KMT caucus said the word “judge” should not be used in the name, as it might blur the distinction between judges and lay judges.
It also said the name should replace “national” with “citizen.”
The KMT, DPP and NPP caucuses agreed that 18-year-olds should be eligible to serve as lay judges, while the Judicial Yuan said that as many people at that age are still in school, there would be a higher percentage of them who would refuse to serve.
The Judicial Yuan also said that 18-year-olds might not be able to handle the psychological pressure of being a lay judge, and instead proposed 23 as the minimum age to be considered eligible.
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) said that a lay judge system and a jury system should be implemented simultaneously, with the lay judge system handling criminal cases with potential prison sentences of seven or more years, and the jury system addressing matters involving corruption, insurrection or obstruction of official duty.
Judicial Yuan Secretary-General Lin Hui-huang (林輝煌) said that the TPP proposal was impractical and would require lay judges to learn two judicial systems.
Using sentences as the basis for which system would handle a case lacks a legal basis, he added.
DPP caucus Secretary-General Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱) yesterday said that judicial reform has been delayed since 2012, and the DPP hopes to complete it during this extraordinary session.
The proposed lay judge system should be considered a priority, as limited resources cannot sustain the introduction of a lay judges and jury trial system simultaneously, he said.
Additional reporting by Lee Hsin-fang
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
Environmental groups yesterday filed an appeal with the Executive Yuan, seeking to revoke the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conditionally approved in February for the Hsieh-ho Power Plant’s planned fourth liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving station off the coast of Keelung. The appeal was filed jointly by the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association and the Keelung City Taiwan Head Cultural Association, which together held a news conference outside the Executive Yuan in Taipei. Explaining the reasons for the appeal, Wang Hsing-chih (王醒之) of the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group said that the EIA failed to address
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
RSS