How Much Luck Does It Take to Exonerate a Wrongful Conviction?

The first time I saw Hsuch Tzu-chiang in person was in early March 2015 at Café Philo in Taipei. I still remember how packed the basement of MediaAnchor Café was back then. Attendees ranged from high school students and university students from various fields to many adults. We always had endless questions about Mr. Hsuch Tzu-chiang's story. The atmosphere on-site was lively, yet a faint sorrow was hard to shake off, because justice was still on its way, with no one knowing when it would finally arrive.

Seeing Hsuch Tzu-chiang again today, a little over a year later, his acquittal has finally been finalized, and the documentary that remained unfinished back then has also found the best possible ending. Perhaps precisely because of this, before the lecture began, I hoped to view the Hsuch case from different angles, yet I kept wondering how to even approach it. Facing a person whose prime years of youth were thus destroyed by the judiciary, what more could I, who pride myself on being a legal professional, say? How can one gaze upon his suffering?

Yet the lecture commenced as scheduled, and Q&A time quickly arrived. I asked three questions in succession, hoping to answer my inner doubts regarding the possibility of wrongful convictions within Taiwan's judicial system.

The first was about the independent operation of the judiciary: can innocence be restored to wrongful convictions without grassroots and civil society efforts? (I am not sure whether this can be equated with "judicial independence," as whether civil critique constitutes an infringement on judicial independence remains a debatable topic.)

In fact, I knew the answer in my heart, but I still held onto a glimmer of naive hope, because behind this question lay my panic regarding my identity as a legal professional. Who were the 70 judges who tried the Hsuch case? They were all elites in the legal sector, the group most familiar with practical operations, and perhaps they could even be my future self. Yet Hsuch Tzu-chiang's suffering stemmed precisely from the judicial mechanism in which we believe, and the perpetrators were no different from us. Can I truly absolve myself and remain detached?

The second question asked what thoughts Mr. Hsuch Tzu-chiang holds in his heart when he is forced to look back at his painful past in every lecture.

Just how much agony can 21 years of unjust grievance entail? I do not know. However, I believe that every time one peels back one's own scars, continuously contemplating and questioning why structural wrongful convictions occur, it requires not only courage, but also faith in society. No one has the right to demand that victims re-enact their pasts simply to help society understand and critique its dissatisfaction with reality, but such voices are truly precious. Thank you, Mr. Hsuch Tzu-chiang, for still being willing to share with everyone after enduring all of this, and for maintaining your belief that the judiciary will change.

The final question: how much luck does it take to overturn a wrongful conviction? From the cases of Ch'en Lung-ch'i, Hsuch Tzu-chiang, and Cheng Hsing-tse, we see that wrongful conviction rescue is possible, yet it simultaneously demands countless hours of time, manpower, and money. In reality, we must also regretfully acknowledge that wrongful convictions can never be fully rescued—not to mention the many disparities in crime and punishment. However, if wrongful convictions originate from the beliefs of legal professionals, isn't rescue a corresponding obligation? Legal professionals have monopolized justice, enjoying relatively generous compensation and social status for years. Yet regarding the occurrence of wrongful convictions, we are also part of the complicit structure. How can we choose to ignore and forget them simply out of so-called life pressures, fearing we might not make money and might face negative impacts? I know that miscarriages of justice are unavoidable, encountering them is bad luck, and exoneration is good luck. But before blaming fate for torturing others, have legal professionals truly exerted their utmost effort for the judiciary we trust and rely upon to make a living, so that we may face the arrival of the Goddess of Justice with a clear conscience?

In the Hsuch case, the guilty ones are not merely those 70 judges.