Striving for Impartial Trials Based on Conscience! – May 18 Kaohsiung District Court Event

Appendix I　The Case of "I am a conscientious judge"

This case involving the Kaohsiung Harbor Police Station implicated more than ten people in total. Yet as many as six were acquitted in the first instance due to insufficient evidence. Police Officer Cheng was not so lucky. Following his indictment, the Cheng family immediately faced immense financial problems—litigation costs, attorney fees, and household living expenses after he was suspended from work due to the involvement. Overwhelming pressure piled up like a rolling wave. His wife gave up her role as a homemaker and became a department store counter clerk; their child started working part-time at a gas station right after graduating from junior high and entering high school; and Cheng himself took on three different jobs: driving a taxi at night, working as a security guard at a hypermarket in the morning, delivering vegetables, and doing odd jobs with whatever time was left. Sleeping less than five hours a day, he fought against financial hardship day and night. The family muddled through these bitter days of lawsuits without a single word of complaint.

It was not until the seventh remand trial that the judge finally agreed to examine and review the Investigation Bureau's audio and video recordings. Regarding the portion of the wiretap transcripts recording bribery slang, the audio from back then was played back repeatedly, but the sounds did not appear in the recordings at all. The judge summoned the investigator who conducted the interrogation back then. The investigator stated: "The content shown in the above wiretap report indeed exists. Perhaps because the tapes manufactured by various cassette tape manufacturers differed in length, shorter tapes were used during copying, resulting in the failure to record the tail-end of the conversation and making this segment of the dialogue unable to be heard upon examination." The judge followed up: "Then can you provide the original tapes?" The investigator replied: "Probably not." Based on this newly discovered evidence, the judge of the seventh remand trial sentenced Police Officer Cheng to an acquittal.

Unexpectedly, when the case reached the eighth remand trial, it encountered Judge Wang Hsien-i. During court sessions, Judge Wang would always complain to defense attorneys about ranking last in the Taipei Bar Association's judicial evaluations. He said, "What are you lawyers up to?" "What are you doubting? Isn't it just that the bar association gives me the last ranking every time? I am a very conscientious judge, how could you treat me like this?", "The court has a problem, the judicial evaluation has a problem, and the lawyers have a problem—everything is a problem..." Precious court time slipped away amidst Judge Wang's complaints. In the end, this Judge Wang, who considered himself conscientious, ignored the Investigation Bureau's procedural flaws and, without investigating new evidence, reversed the judgment and convicted him to 2 years and 7 months of imprisonment. Unfortunately, caught in the wave of the Fair Criminal Speedy Trial Act case closures, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal. Police Officer Cheng's 17 years of life were ruined by this lawsuit. He had once encountered a judge who tried cases impartially based on conscience; it was just that such judges were rare in the judicial world.

Case Profile

Party Involved	Police Officer Cheng
Case Type	Violation of the Anti-Corruption Act
Judicial Issues	The Investigation Bureau's inability to produce the wiretap transcript recordings. Incompetent judges.
Related Judgment	Supreme Court Criminal Judgment 101-Tai-Shang-872 (2012)
Message to the Judiciary	Police Officer Cheng: "Please have judges try cases impartially and based on conscience when reviewing cases."

Further Reading

The Unfinished Road ~ The Case of Kaohsiung Harbor Police Officer Cheng