Prosecutor, Are You Exhausted? ～ "Hounding Bad Prosecutors" Press Conference Series (I)

In July of last year, our Foundation officially established the "Hounding Bad Prosecutors" task force, mobilizing over 50 attorneys across senior, mid-level, and younger generations. Our mission is singular: to specifically identify whether final not-guilty verdicts rendered by courts in individual judicial cases are connected to the intentional or negligent acts of the prosecuting prosecutors.

As everyone knows, judges act passively based on the principle of passive litigation (nemo judex sine actore). Prosecutors are the ones who truly hold the keys to the doors of justice; without an indictment, there is no trial. In other words, if the evidence for an indictment is insufficient, if evidence favorable to the defendant is not investigated in a timely manner, or if there are errors in legal interpretation, defendants who should never have entered judicial proceedings—or who were innocent to begin with—will be plunged into the agonizing abyss of protracted litigation. When a district court hands down a not-guilty verdict, prosecutors can still appeal to the High Court; when the High Court hands down a not-guilty verdict, prosecutors can still refuse to concede and appeal to the Supreme Court. As long as the prosecutors do not give up, cases that should have ended long ago will "according to law" proceed through the courts. Yet defendants with nowhere to turn have no choice but to respond to court summonses "according to law"; failing to appear in court carries the possibility of being apprehended, and missing a subpoena risks being placed on the wanted list. This judicial entanglement continues until the litigation concludes and a final not-guilty verdict is rendered.

Our Foundation has carpet-bombed and searched through final not-guilty verdicts rendered by the Supreme Court across the two years of 2009 and 2010—numbering over 800 cases. From the contents of the publicly available judgments, we have filtered out those highly likely to be associated with the unlawful and improper indictments and appeals filed by the handling prosecutors, and we are releasing them to the public batch by batch, case by case. Another category of cases we have decided to publicize consists of those where judges, pursuant to Article 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure—which stipulates that "...where the court recognizes that the methods of proof indicated by the prosecutor are obviously insufficient to establish that the defendant may have committed a crime..."—issued rulings ordering prosecutors to make corrections within a time limit, and dismissed the indictments upon failure to correct within the deadline. These cases likewise reveal clear deficiencies in prosecutors' dereliction of duty.

The three cases published today are set forth in the table below:

1. As Long as You Indict, the Truth Doesn't Matter!?

   Cause of Action and Case Number	Judgment Result	Summary	Who Should Be Held Responsible?
   Divisional Act Governing Control of Guns, Ammunition and Knives  Supreme Court 98 Tai-Shang No. 532 Taichung Branch, High Court 97 Shang-Su No. 2288 Taichung District Court 97 Su No. 807 Taichung District Prosecutors Office 96 Chen-Tzu No. 21512	Not guilty all the way	Police engaged in "swapping cases and setting suspects free," yet the prosecutor deliberately ignored evidence favorable to the defendant, effectively becoming an accomplice to abusive police powers	Taichung District Prosecutors Office? Handling Prosecutor? Taichung Branch, High Prosecutors Office? Handling Prosecutor?

2. You Can Indict Even Without Key Physical Evidence!?

   Cause of Action and Case Number	Judgment Result	Summary	Who Should Be Held Responsible?
   Offenses Against Public Trust (Forgery of Documents), etc. Kaohsiung District Court 94 Su No. 2245 Kaohsiung District Prosecutors Office 94 Chen-Tzu No. 8377	Indicted, but dismissed by the court	The prosecutor indicted forgery of documents without even having physical evidence such as a "document," which clearly constituted insufficient evidence. After the dismissal, the prosecutor attempted to file an interlocutory appeal out of time, demonstrating glaring perfunctoriness and abuse of power	Kaohsiung District Prosecutors Office? Handling Prosecutor?

3. They Even Got the Defendant's Identity Wrong?

   Cause of Action and Case Number	Judgment Result	Summary	Who Should Be Held Responsible?
   Banking Act, etc.  Taipei District Court 99 Chin-Su No. 45 Taipei District Prosecutors Office 99 Chen-Tzu No. 2186	Indicted, dismissed by the court	Although the information obtainable from the ruling is limited and prevents a full assessment of the circumstances, there is strong suspicion that this case simply misidentified the defendant	Taipei District Prosecutors Office? Handling Prosecutor?

Our demands are as follows:

1. We urge the Ministry of Justice to conduct a case-by-case review of the aforementioned cases, investigate whether prosecutors truly exercised due diligence when indicting or appealing, and publicly release the investigation results within one month.
2. Should the Ministry of Justice deem that individual prosecutors genuinely warrant disciplinary sanctions, we ask that it concretely publicize the handling procedures.

Our Foundation's "Hounding Bad Prosecutors" task force will continue to monitor unlawful and improper acts by prosecutors, hold press conferences for this series on an irregular basis, supervise unlawful and improper acts by prosecutors, and strive to play the role of an external watchdog for prosecutorial reform.

Attendees

Lin Feng-cheng, Esq., CEO, Judicial Reform Foundation
Lin Yung-sung, Esq., Convening Attorney of the Hounding Bad Prosecutors Task Force, Judicial Reform Foundation

Press Contacts

Lin Feng-cheng, Esq., CEO, Judicial Reform Foundation
Kao Jung-chih, Esq., Office Director, Judicial Reform Foundation