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Review | "Not Guilty" Episode 3

Attorney Lü Shao-wei／JRF Executive Director

This episode begins with Yang Ming-te (a character alluding to Hsu Tzu-chiang) writing a suicide note, having completely given up on clearing his name, alongside Yang's mother—who runs around fighting for her son's innocence, takes care of her grandson, and also has to wait on her alcoholic husband. The director focuses the lens on Yang Ming-te's family, bringing a different perspective to the audience.

Based on the author's practical experience, this is largely true. When serving a prison sentence or undergoing detention, the ones who suffer are often not just the people locked away; their families outside, though enjoying physical freedom, find their souls deeply imprisoned.

General family members of inmates must face such immense physical and mental torment, let alone the wronged Yang Ming-te in this drama.

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Review | "Not Guilty" Episode 4

Attorney Ch'en Wei-ch'iao／JRF Executive Committee Member

From the perspective of a legal professional, the plot of the sixth retrial should focus on how Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 582 was actually utilized by Yang Ming-te's defense counsel during the sixth retrial, and how the judges of the sixth retrial faced the new perspective of Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 582.

However, unfortunately, viewers could not understand through the plot development what the actual content and impact of Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 582 were, or whether the defendant Yang Ming-te's right to confrontation was safeguarded during the sixth retrial proceedings. We can only gather that Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 582 seemingly deemed Yang Ming-te innocent, and so on. But conversely, the assertion that Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 582 declared Yang Ming-te innocent is actually a major misunderstanding.

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Review | "Not Guilty" Episode 5

Liao Szu-min／JRF Volunteer

Although I was a law student who had only witnessed a few court sessions back then, in my limited courtroom experience, public prosecutors usually state during their closing arguments that the case is as stated in the indictment, and prosecutors who say a little more usually just summarize the contents of the indictment. Having a prosecutor in a Taiwanese courtroom perform like this—tearing up paper and scattering the fragments toward the public gallery—is truly unheard of.

After all, the citizen judge system had not been implemented back then, and the only person the prosecutor had to convince was a judge who had already reviewed the case files. Back-and-forth sparring and relatively passionate expressions usually only occurred during the witness cross-examination stage, and this has become one of my most deeply ingrained segments of the trial in the Hsu case.

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Review | "Not Guilty" All Eight Episodes

Attorney Ch'en Wei-ch'iao／JRF Executive Committee Member

"Not Guilty" is Taiwan's first Taiwanese-language legal drama. It takes as its prototype the miscarriage of justice story—where someone narrowly escaped death nine times out of ten—of real-life figure Hsu Tzu-chiang, who was implicated in the September 1, 1995 kidnapping and ransom of real estate broker Huang Chun-shu, who was later cruelly murdered. At the time, this fell under Article 348, Paragraph 1 of the Criminal Code, which mandated the death penalty as the sole punishment for robbery-homicide.

Why is it said he "narrowly escaped death nine times out of ten"? Because following the crime on September 1, 1995, Hsu Tzu-chiang went on the run out of fear of "judicial injustice." He later voluntarily faced justice and was detained on June 24, 1996. He was subsequently sentenced to death in the Shilin District Court's first instance, the Taiwan High Court's second instance, and through remands by the Supreme Court for the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth retrials. The Supreme Court's 89-Tai-Shang-2196 Judgment ultimately dismissed the appeal on April 27, 2000, finalizing the sentence.

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