The Mei Fu-An Case: The "Minor" and the "Massive" in the Judicial System

As a Taiwanese citizen with a national ID card, it is likely hard to imagine how precarious survival can be for someone without one in Taiwan. Having an ID card allows you to freely study, work, marry, and travel in and out of Taiwan, and grants you eligibility for low- and middle-income household assistance when facing financial hardship.

As a judge, one might not necessarily consider how severely the Taiwanese government, in the name of maintaining "social security," screens and scrutinizes vulnerable immigrants. As long as someone is deemed to have "improper conduct" or a "criminal record"—no matter how minor the offense, or even if they were simply involved in an accidental traffic collision—it can deprive a vulnerable immigrant of the opportunity to acquire status. Various seemingly trivial offenses in the eyes of the judge, once a migrant defendant is convicted, are not simply a matter of paying a fine and serving as a warning; rather, they may fall into survival difficulties due to the deprivation of their opportunity to acquire nationality.

A summary judgment of conviction, deemed unnecessary to investigate thoroughly simply because it was considered a petty case, created a miscarriage of justice in this manner, plunging the party involved into suffering... The case of Mei Fu-An (hereinafter referred to as "Granny Mei") is precisely such a case...

Granny Mei is from Jiangxi, China. After her first husband passed away, she remarried a Taiwanese veteran and came to Taiwan in 2004. Granny Mei and the veteran depended on each other, living together in a dilapidated little house in Jinguashih for five years, and Granny Mei intended to put down roots in Taiwan. However, just as Granny Mei was about to obtain her ID card, the veteran passed away.

After the veteran passed away, the veteran's son A-hung (a pseudonym) approached Granny Mei. Granny Mei hoped to continue living in the small house, but A-hung believed he was the true heir and that Granny Mei had no right to live there, so he drove Granny Mei out. Consequently, many disputes arose between the two, and they filed criminal complaints against each other. During the course of the litigation, the prosecutor filed a motion for summary judgment against Granny Mei, and the court found her guilty of the offenses of embezzlement and false accusation, sentencing her to 20 days of detention and 3 months of imprisonment with 2 years of probation, respectively. Because of this criminal record, Granny Mei's application for an ID card was rejected, and she was consequently unable to obtain low- and middle-income household subsidies, living a meager existence from hand to mouth after her husband's death and being driven out of her home...

The JRF took on Granny Mei's case and discovered that it was a blatant miscarriage of justice. In the year following the final conviction of Granny Mei's criminal case, the civil court ruled that A-hung was not the biological son of old Chang. Furthermore, Granny Mei was originally convicted of embezzlement because the court determined that she had embezzled "a water heater and a washing machine" that should have belonged in joint ownership to the other heirs (i.e., A-hung). As for the false accusation charge, it stemmed from Granny Mei filing a criminal complaint for unlawful intrusion because she believed A-hung had broken into her home multiple times; however, because her legal recourse was incorrect, it was turned into a false accusation instead. Unfortunately, the basis for convicting someone of a false accusation relies primarily on how the judge interprets the defendant's subjective intent in making an erroneous complaint—an determination of subjective intent that essentially relies on the judge's discretionary power of conviction, which is virtually impossible to overturn with objective evidence. Therefore, the JRF ultimately filed a motion for retrial for Granny Mei solely regarding the embezzlement charge. Fortunately, Granny Mei's motion for retrial was not only granted, but she was also acquitted on December 11, 2014.

With her acquittal confirmed through a retrial, we certainly strongly affirm the courage of the judge presiding over the retrial in facing the judiciary's past errors. However, we cannot help but wonder: was this suffering in the middle truly necessary? Throughout the original criminal proceedings, Granny Mei had repeatedly argued that A-hung was not the veteran's son, and the truth of this matter could actually be known by taking a DNA test or waiting for the outcome of the civil court judgment. Yet the court simply refused to do so, feeling that this was a minor case that should be wrapped up quickly to serve as a warning to the defendant.

From Granny Mei's case, we see the judiciary's problem of handling petty offenses perfunctorily, as well as the unfriendliness of Taiwan's immigration policy toward vulnerable immigrants. We sincerely hope that Taiwan's judicial system can squarely face the profound impact that petty offense cases may have on the parties involved, and refrain from feeling that there is no need to listen to the parties' voices or conduct additional investigations that might help clarify the truth simply because it is a minor offense. We also sincerely hope that Taiwan's immigration policy can cease to be so harsh; the acquisition of citizenship concerns the protection of fundamental human rights, and there is truly no need to universally deprive immigrants of the opportunity to obtain an ID card simply because of petty offenses or inadvertent violations of the law.

Further Reading

1. The Story of Granny Mei ◎ Lin Pei-Ying
2. The "Minor" and the "Massive" in the Judicial System ◎ Lin Wei-Ting