Two Years of Trial, Only to Conclude "Appeal Filed Past Deadline"?

The statutory period for filing a criminal appeal is "ten days," which is legal ABCs in practice. Few attorneys dare to neglect it for a simple reason: once the appeal period expires, the case becomes final. If you ask every attorney what is the hardest thing to explain to a client, it is probably: "We needed to appeal, forgot to appeal, and the case became final." That helpless feeling is devastating, especially in criminal cases with a guilty verdict. Even if the attorney feels overwhelming guilt, it is the client who ends up imprisoned, which is both distressing and humiliating.

Whether an appeal period has "expired" is also the ABCs that courts examine during appeal proceedings; very few judges would let it slide. The reason is somewhat "ambiguous" because once an appeal procedure is improper, judges can lawfully dismiss the appeal: "lawful, effortless, fast case closure, and performance points still earned." Of course, a judge's judgment will only mention "dismissed in accordance with the law," while the latter three "incentives" are harder to mention and require no explanation. However, as long as the appellant truly missed the deadline, there is no way to blame the judge.

In contrast, prosecutors appear much more relaxed when facing these "ten days." Because the appeal period only begins to run from the "receipt" of the judgment document, prosecutors can receive documents whenever they please. Even if the judgment document sits on a prosecutor's desk for over ten days, whenever the prosecutor feels like signing for "receipt," the appeal period "officially" begins to run. Out of "consideration" for prosecutors' frequent court appearances and heavy workloads, the court usually "turns a blind eye," mostly calculating the start of the appeal period from the day the prosecutor "actually" signed. This "underworld rule" has been practiced for years. One can only sigh that our attorneys do not have corresponding "rights to chase away postmen," "rights to refuse signature," or "rights to temporarily close the law office doors." Who tells us that prosecutors are the "incarnation of justice" and that "judges and prosecutors are one family," while we deserve to be "devils' advocates" and unworthy of sympathy?

However, if the issue of an "expired appeal"—which should have been investigated as a basic ABC by the court—was stubbornly dragged out for "two years" before being discovered, the first question to ask is: isn't this a massive waste of judicial resources? Furthermore, since the parties inexplicably accompanied this wasted two-year period, is the court completely free of responsibility for their tangible and intangible losses? What is even more suspicious is: why did the prosecutor's version of the appeal period calculation model, to which the court was accustomed to "turning a blind eye," suddenly "fail"? The thin and flimsy grounds of "dismissed in accordance with the law" perhaps ultimately fail to live up to the "impartial court" expected by the people.

※ This article was revised and abridged (first paragraph) from the China Times Forum on 2006/11/10 and published under the title "Two Years of Trial, and It Turns Out to Be an Overdue Appeal?"; this version is the complete original text