Taiwan’s Unreasonable Judicial Process

I do not normally watch events in Taiwan closely, but on my recent trip to Taiwan I could not but notice its unreasonable judicial process evidenced in the case of murder charges against 蘇建和 et al. Given the way the media reported on the case, one could not make any inferences on how strong the evidences were, either for or against the defendants. However, one point stood out in my eyes which seems to have escaped the commentators that I had read: the defendants had been acquitted in one of the trials. In the United States, that alone would have put the case to rest; there would be no way for prosecutors to continue pressing it. If the prosecutors fail to prove their case by presenting sufficient evidence (with the corresponding severity of charges: first-degree? second-degree? manslaughter? etc.), then the defendants cannot be found guilty. Legal guiltiness is different from actual guiltiness: the former has to do with what the limited human system can prove, but the latter can escape the imperfect system. The American legal system recognizes this and designs its judicial process to protect the innocent at the expense of potentially letting free the actually guilty.

This case, therefore, shows a fundamental problem in Taiwan’s judicial process. I do hope that in the coming weeks arguments will not focus so much on whether the defendants were actually guilty, but rather on how the judicial process itself needs to be fixed.