Course Reflection on the Legal Services Special Topic "Dummy Account Cases": Liu Pei-han and Yu Yu-hsuan

Before engaging with actual cases, we learned that the massive surge of so-called accomplice to fraud in dummy account cases stems from the extensive, or even abusive, application of summary judgment procedures in our country. Furthermore, the courts' judgment grounds fail to show detailed descriptions and understanding of the defendants' life circumstances, revealing only abstract, homogeneous, and boilerplate determinations of "oblique intent." We had never imagined that individuals deemed by the court as accomplices to fraud, due to the summary judgment procedure, not only lost the opportunity to directly voice their opinions to the judge, but were even denied the rights they should have had during investigation.

In the procedures we are familiar with, investigations are conducted by prosecutors. However, in the case we interviewed, the questioning was conducted not by a prosecutor, but by a prosecutor's investigator, which completely upended our imagination. "Although there is no rule prohibiting prosecutor's investigators from conducting interrogations, does this truly safeguard the rights of the defendant?" We could not help but wonder. Moreover, through the statements of our client this time, we learned that every investigative hearing was conducted by a prosecutor's investigator. Does this mean that defendants are even deprived of the opportunity to voice their opinions to a prosecutor? Setting aside its legality, our client believed that as long as they truthfully stated the facts to a prosecutor, they would certainly secure a non-prosecution disposition; not only our client, but we believe most citizens think this way. Therefore, during investigative hearings, is it acceptable for interrogations to be conducted solely by a prosecutor's investigator while the prosecutor never appears?

Furthermore, through the client's account, we learned that although the prosecutor's investigator did not conduct improper questioning, the questioning style made the client feel that the act of handing over their account was an irreparable and massive mistake, and the tone of voice also made the client feel disrespected. Even toward convicted criminals, there must be a certain level of respect for human rights, let alone a criminal suspect. What baffled us the most is that the Code of Criminal Procedure exists to discover the truth and prevent crime; yet, while interrogating the client, the prosecutor's investigator continuously used leading questions to make the client admit to being an accomplice to fraud, while the client was unaware of walking right into a trap. Such methods not only fail to help discover the truth, but they also wrong innocent people, giving rise to miscarriages of justice and causing the Taiwanese public's distrust in the judiciary to remain extremely high.

Through interviewing the client, we realized that many theories learned in class are ultimately just theories that cannot be truly implemented in judicial practice. Perhaps the aforementioned situations do not represent the majority of current judicial phenomena, but such questionable investigative processes still demand our attention!