Fleeing Defendants: Impossible to Prevent?
Last edited: 2026-08-29
Photo Source / ETtoday
Prosecutor Ching Tien-Po, whose corruption conviction was finalized, has fled, and the authorities have replayed the 'shameful' scripts of Wu Tse-Yuan, Ho Chih-Hui, and Lo Fu-Chu. The public is sick of seeing this. Courts and prosecutors point fingers at each other even more than before, this time dragging the Legislative Yuan into the mix as well. Whenever a problem arises, the government's remedy is to 'future' amend the law, or that it is 'already' amending the law, 'except' that the Legislative Yuan is inefficient. The general public has long been dissatisfied with the Legislative Yuan, so shifting the blame onto lawmakers is quite a convenient outlet to vent and relieve pressure. The Minister of Justice is once again advocating for 'detention upon conviction', a typical prescription that 'treats the head when the head aches, and the foot when the foot aches', which is truly deplorable.
The root problem of defendants absconding is our lengthy and inefficient judicial procedure, where lower and higher instances often hold differing legal interpretations, flip-flopping between guilty and not guilty. Before thoroughly reforming our litigation system (e.g., solidifying the first instance, making the second instance a strict review of facts or a purely legal review), detaining defendants simply because they are found guilty would mean stepping back onto the old path of arbitrarily detaining people and violating human rights. The longer a person is detained, the greater the pressure on the judge to hand down an acquittal, making it easy—both tangibly and intangibly—to infringe upon human rights. Moreover, once an acquittal is rendered, the state must pay compensation and restitution, which is once again footed by the general public. In fact, ever since Grand Justices' Interpretation No. 392 returned the power of detention to the courts, Taiwan has steadily moved toward restricting and cautiously exercising detention. All of this is to implement the principle of presumption of innocence, to prevent extracting confessions through detention, and to avoid premature and excessive violations of human rights. Therefore, we are surprised and perplexed by the Minister of Justice once again proposing such an obsolete policy as a 'solution'.
Alternatives to Detention
To ensure that defendants whose guilt has been finalized can be executed, the strongest and most effective measure is certainly detention, but detention also carries the greatest side effects. This is precisely why any progressive state under the rule of law exercises extreme caution and care when utilizing detention. For this very reason, the Code of Criminal Procedure provides for various alternative measures to detention.
The most common alternatives to detention in current practice are bail, regular reporting, travel bans, and residency restrictions. High bail amounts must naturally match the defendant's 'net worth' to exert any binding force. Determining the appropriate amount of bail is a science requiring a high degree of life wisdom.
Regular reporting is naturally a 'checking' measure, much like a baseball pitcher keeping an eye on a runner wanting to steal a base. Highly intensive reporting to police stations ensures that even defendants intent on absconding objectively lack the time to prepare and dare not act rashly. Even if they run, due to limited time, theoretically they will not have gotten too far away.
Travel and exit bans are measures that 'deter the honorable, but not the villainous'. Ordinary people can probably only hide within the island of Taiwan, whereas those with real capability and channels will naturally utilize smuggling methods to abscond overseas. As for residency restrictions, in current practical application, their symbolic significance outweighs their substantive significance.
For individuals without the capacity to escape, they may not wish to face criminal sanctions in the first place; however, a life of hiding in fear cannot necessarily be sustained for long, and quite a few people ultimately choose to simply 'serve time earlier and get out earlier'. Consequently, the aforementioned alternative measures to detention still exhibit a considerable performance gap between ordinary civilians with no resources or capabilities and 'high-profile figures' with resources and channels. This is an intrinsic difference, and we should use measures to bridge that gap.
Making Good Use of E-Governance Measures
This also illustrates that what the public cares about most is whether our judiciary can finally stop letting 'high-profile figures' run away. The unconditional 'detention upon conviction' proposed by the Minister of Justice will undoubtedly do more harm than good under the premise that litigation procedures remain unchanged. The practical result may backfire, harming ordinary people with no power or influence the most. It fails to block 'high-profile figures' while severely undermining the presumption of innocence, which is paramount to the state under the rule of law.
Amending the law is meant to align with policy, and any policy that infringes upon the people's rights must have legislative authorization passed by the parliament. Even if the Legislative Yuan is blamed for legislative inefficiency, the draft amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure currently lying in the Legislative Yuan can at best only reinforce deficiencies during the period from final judgment to execution; the judicial authorities have proposed no effective countermeasures for the window period while litigation is still ongoing.
Therefore, considering the prevalence of smartphones and the trend where the cost of wearable devices may become increasingly lower, making good use of various e-governance measures as auxiliary tools for alternatives to detention is believed to be a feasible approach. This is not merely the 'electronic shackles' imagined by the Ministry of Justice. Current electronic shackles are costly and also paid for by the government. Electronic shackles, stripped down, are essentially devices that continuously transmit positioning signals—something that the smartphones everyone holds in their hands today can already accomplish.
The simplest approach is to develop an app, requiring defendants who meet the criteria for detention to load this software onto their phones, report their location at regular intervals, and have a computer determine whether there are any violations of residency restrictions. Furthermore, this can be supplemented by random spot-checks, requiring defendants to report to the nearest local police station to prevent them from handing their phones over to others for use. Any violation should be interpreted as evidence of a flight risk, potentially subjecting them to detention once again.
15 Slide Presentation Interpreting Taiwan's Fugitive Criminals / PNN PTS News Issues Center
As for whether to include features like electronic shackles—which cannot be removed, trigger a signal if cut, etc.—this should be determined on a case-by-case basis in accordance with the principle of proportionality. Of course, if one day the technology for such wearable devices matures and becomes as inexpensive as ordinary electronic watches, once cost is no longer an issue, they will undoubtedly serve as excellent auxiliary measures for alternatives to detention, and the procurement costs could even be passed on to defendants applying for the suspension of detention.
Naturally, we cannot portray e-governance measures as miraculous, just as the Ministry of Justice often depicts electronic shackles as miraculous. If a defendant truly wants to run, cutting the electronic shackles allows them to run; if they truly have the ability, they can even brazenly smuggle themselves out of the country while wearing electronic shackles. Adopting e-devices as auxiliary measures for alternatives to detention is truly just an 'auxiliary' tool.
The fundamental solution remains reforming our litigation procedures. If a judgment requires the defendant to appear in court, and execution follows immediately upon finalization, the Supreme Court—accustomed to its elusive ways—will first of all be compelled to hold hearings. Even if the system is changed so that cases are finalized at the second instance, the pronouncement of judgment should still mandatorily require the defendant's appearance.
Ultimately, since the Criminal Code already presets the expiration of limitations for 'prosecution periods' and 'execution periods', it inherently presupposes that 'criminal law / punishment' has functional 'boundaries / limits'. Suspects running away is already factored into the 'presumption' of criminal law. Detaining the guilty certainly prevents them from escaping, but it also maximizes the side effects of 'criminal law / punishment'.
What currently causes the greatest public dissatisfaction is that high-profile figures keep running away. If judicial authorities can properly focus their energy and measures on high-profile figures and stop giving the public the impression that the judiciary applies 'double standards', we believe they can gradually regain public confidence in the judiciary.
※ This article was published on PNN PTS News Issues Center
The following is a supplementary article by Prosecutor Ch'en Jui-jen, provided for readers' reference and comparison.
Hanging a Bell on the Released Tiger
December 28, 2015 Apple Daily
Chen Jui-Jen / Prosecutor
Former prosecutor Ching T'ien-po, after being convicted of corruption by the court and sentenced to 11 years and 6 months with finality, fled to Canada to live a life of leisure. The 'godfather of the petrochemical industry', Ch'en Wu-hsiung, is also rumored to have fled overseas after his sentencing, drawing public condemnation across the country. How can we prevent such incidents from recurring?
In the United States, defendants are handcuffed and sent to prison right in the courtroom after the jury returns a guilty verdict, eliminating the need for any so-called 'anti-escape mechanism' (assigning personnel to monitor defendants out on bail). Why doesn't Taiwan do this? Some say it is because defendants can still appeal to the Supreme Court and the case is not yet finalized, so doing so would violate the principle of 'presumption of innocence'.
In fact, when a U.S. defendant is found guilty by a jury, the case is likewise not yet finalized because it still has to go through a 'sentencing procedure' before a sentence is handed down. Moreover, even if sentenced, the defendant can still appeal to a second-instance court (which is a court of law). However, 18 U.S.C. § 3143 explicitly stipulates that when a defendant is found guilty, the judge shall 'in principle' detain the defendant in court. Therefore, the 'presumption of innocence' does not prevent courts from detaining a guilty defendant who is in the process of appealing.
Could Taiwan do as the U.S. does before amending the law? Systemically speaking, Taiwan's High Court is the final court of fact (while the Supreme Court is a court of law), which is equivalent to a jury verdict. Furthermore, Taiwan's Code of Criminal Procedure explicitly stipulates that a defendant may be detained if there is a risk of 'flight'. Therefore, when Taiwan's High Court finds a defendant guilty, it is entirely capable of ruling that 'because the defendant has been sentenced to a heavy penalty, the possibility of flight has greatly increased' and detaining the defendant in court (or continuing the detention of a defendant already in custody). However, perhaps because Taiwan's Supreme Court frequently overturns guilty verdicts from second-instance courts, it creates psychological pressure on second-instance judges, making them reluctant to do so. Yet the Ministry of Justice created a thankless 'anti-escape mechanism' of its own invention, giving judges even more peace of mind to 'release the tiger back to the mountains' rather than exercising their power of detention.
Under Taiwan's unique judicial cultural background, amending the law to provide judges with a clear basis must be the only path. We must explicitly stipulate in the Code of Criminal Procedure the defendant's obligation to appear in court upon the pronouncement of judgment, and that the final court of fact (currently the High Court), when finding a defendant guilty and sentencing them to a fixed-term imprisonment of a certain number of years or more, should in principle detain the defendant in court.
If defendants claim they will not flee, the burden of proof and persuasion should rest upon them (whereas in regular detention, prosecutors must prove that a defendant has a 'risk of flight', exemption from detention after a guilty verdict requires defendants to prove that they have 'no risk of flight').
Next, it should be stipulated that if a heavy-penalty convicted defendant is released on bail, they shall be fitted with electronic shackles in accordance with the Sexual Assault Prevention Act to facilitate tracking their whereabouts. Finally, modeling after the U.S. offense of 'bail jumping', it should be explicitly stipulated that when a defendant out on bail absconds, not only will their bail be forfeited, but a separate criminal offense is constituted.
In short, once a tiger is caught and determined to have bitten someone, it should in principle be locked in a cage. If it is to be released back into the wild, shouldn't we at least hang a bell on it before letting it go?
This article is an AI-generated translation of the original Chinese text. In the event of any discrepancy, the Chinese version shall prevail.