Indictment Review Project
1. Why review indictments?
On June 15, 2018, district prosecutors offices began publishing indictments as required — an important step for judicial transparency in Taiwan. Yet after the indictments were made public, for a long time no institution or scholar undertook any systematic review or study of this material.
The JRF believes that "indictment" does not equal "guilt." When a case goes to trial and ends in acquittal, it may indicate deficiencies in the investigation. If common problems can be identified from these cases, mechanisms for improvement or oversight can then be developed, reducing the chance of innocent people being wrongly prosecuted.
Core project goal: By systematically examining the indictments of cases that ended in acquittal, we aim to see investigative flaws in real cases, develop feasible oversight strategies, and press prosecutorial agencies to raise the quality of their indictments.
2. Methodology
Case sourcing: cases acquitted at both first and second instance
Judgments of the Taiwan High Court and its branches were searched in the Judicial Yuan's judgment database, filtered by the keywords "holding: appeal dismissed" plus "content: appeal without merit & not guilty." Interns and volunteers then checked each hit to confirm the case was acquitted at both instances, and consolidated identical case numbers.
Choosing "acquitted at both instances" excludes cases where the two courts diverged in their evaluation of the evidence, focusing on cases found not guilty from start to finish — making the discussion of investigative flaws more persuasive.
Review method: nearly 20 lawyers reading and reporting in batches
Nearly 20 lawyers from the Taipei office's evaluation team and the Taichung office's case rescue team read the indictments together, meeting monthly — online and in person throughout the pandemic — to report review results in batches.
Tracking: flagging questionable cases and developing improvement mechanisms
Cases with questionable indictment quality were separately tracked, and the corresponding improvement or oversight mechanisms for each type of problem were discussed, with a view to formulating concrete advocacy directions.
3. Types of problems examined
While reading through the large volume of acquittal-case indictments, the lawyer team paid particular attention to the following common investigative flaws:
Failure to examine evidence
Key physical, documentary, or digital evidence was not fully examined during the investigation, leaving the indictment on weak footing.
Improper interrogation
The interrogation process may have violated due process, affecting the voluntariness and credibility of statements.
Flawed written records
Records prepared by prosecutors or police contained flaws — incomplete entries, discrepancies with what was actually said, or procedures not conducted as required.
4. Project timeline
District prosecutors offices began publishing indictments, a major step for transparency of judicial information in Taiwan. The JRF began monitoring and tracking this public material.
The JRF evaluation team launched its systematic review, tracking cases from the start of indictment disclosure on June 15, 2018 through the end of 2020, and comprehensively surveying two categories: "fully acquitted" and "one of multiple defendants fully acquitted."
The lawyer team continued its review — despite the pandemic, monthly meetings continued in parallel online and in person for over a year, analyzing indictment quality case by case.
The first stage of the project was completed: all cases through the end of 2020 were reviewed, and the discussion of problem types and improvement mechanisms was brought to a close.
In Taiwan, indictments were long non-public documents, opened to public access by law only in 2018. Facing this unprecedented body of first-hand material, the JRF was the first to establish a systematic review mechanism, hoping that citizen oversight can fill the institutional gap and make "indictment quality" a public issue open to scrutiny.
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Last edited: 2026-04-28