Do Judges Who Break the Law Escape the Punishment Faced by Ordinary Citizens?

Recently, newspapers reported that Chang Ping-lung (張炳龍), a judge at the Taiwan High Court, was accused of accepting bribes from a litigant and repeatedly sentenced to heavy penalties. However, in the fourth remand trial at the Taiwan High Court, a dramatic reversal occurred: the court ruled that the prior statements made by witnesses at the Investigation Bureau lacked admissibility as evidence under the new system of the Code of Criminal Procedure, resulting in an acquittal. Yet, the person accused of offering the bribe in the same case had already been definitively convicted of bribery back in 1999. This created the bizarre anomaly where the briber is guilty, but the bribe-taker is innocent.

This is not an isolated bizarre occurrence. Former High Court criminal division judge Lo Chi-hsiung (羅紀雄), former Taoyuan District Court civil execution division judge Liu Ta-cheng, and others have also secured acquittals, similarly on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Reviewing records over the past decade concerning judges prosecuted for judicial integrity violations, the only one found guilty was Tsai Hsin-nan, a former judge at the Taiwan High Court Taichung Branch Court.

Some argue that this is due to the protection of defendants' procedural human rights after the new criminal procedure system implemented the "presumption of innocence," adopted cross-examination, and enforced strict rules of evidence. However, what is perplexing is that in cases involving ordinary people, judges still frequently ignore evidence favorable to the defendant and render rulings unfavorable to them. When trying former colleagues, they resolve doubts in favor of the defendant (in dubio pro reo); when encountering cases involving ordinary citizens, concepts like the presumption of innocence and strict proof somehow never seem to apply. With such double standards, how can the public ever have faith in court judgments?

Looking further back at the historical records of the Commission on the Disciplinary Sanctions of Functionaries (公懲會), the disciplinary outcomes for these implicated judges mostly consist of suspension from office, suspension of duties, demerits, admonitions, or reduction in rank and salary adjustment—either entirely painless, or once the disciplinary period expires, they simply return to being judges as if nothing ever happened. After all, our judges enjoy lifetime tenure, and the law lacks any institutional mechanism to oversee and purge judges. No matter how incompetent a judge might be, if they simply brazen it out, they can remain a judge until the end of time. Under such a system, how can the public ever trust the conduct of judges?

How can the judiciary build public credibility in the hearts of the people? By establishing a system that allows civil society to evaluate and remove judges. Yet, a draft Judges Act has languished in the Judicial Yuan for over a decade with no movement in sight. To enhance the judiciary's image, the Judicial Yuan frequently promotes ISO certification for courts and spends 30 million NTD on advertising campaigns. Eschewing the straightforward for the roundabout, and choosing complexity over simplicity, the Judicial Yuan truly needs to thoroughly re-examine its mindset in all of this!