Jury Trials in Taiwan

Jury Trials. JURIES.

A question i have had for 100% of my tine here in Taiwan. Juries are of the people. They are the people. They decide life or death, wrong or right. Why would a ‘free people’ want anything other.

Judges are appointed. Appointed by politicians. Hence, corrupted.

At least, at the end of the day, when it is a jury handing down decisions, no one can blame a filthy juditiary. Juries might not be perfect, but at least it is your neighbor you’re being judged by.

Insult. “you’re too stupid to quslify as a judge!” This is the message sent to every citizen of a country that entrusts judges instead of jury members.

T

Juries?

LOL.

You have the right to be judged by a guanxi-enabled KMT autocrat who has an innate distrust of foreigners and is feeling grumpy because he hasn’t had his morning covfefe.

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So Taiwanese jurors will be more resistant to bribery and intimidation?

A post was split to a new topic: Euphemisms for something vulgar

I don’t quite see why you would believe the KMT is particularly xenophobic? What makes you believe the DPP is better?

Couple of things:

First: i don’t see where the DPP has done anything that qualifies them as less xenophobic than the KMT

Second: KMT history of corruption, cronyism and ‘comfort with gangsters’ as a way of doing business makes them the greater threat to justice reform.

Third: i would not want to face a jury here as a foreigner. No sir. I at least don’t want to be the first one.

My argument is for the dignity of a society. A society needs to be ‘of the people’.

Maybe make it a choice: jury trial or judge.

T

If you were falsely accused as a foreigner of raping a local would you want a jury made up of 12 “good” men and women or a judge. I think I’d choose a judge.

Have you even seen Twelve Angry Men?

No , but it sounds like it chimes in with what I’m pointing out. I’d prefer a professional bureaucrat to go through evidence methodically and by the book rather than a jury which I think would be more open to emotional manipulation than the dry bureaucrat. I’ll check out 12 Angry Men.
Plus I don’t think my looks (meaning kind of ugly) and size (muscular) would work in my favor ith a jury versus let’s say a 60KG local female.

Taiwan is interesting as you can have up to 5 judges I believe at the same time.

I think it is one judge in the first trial, then 3 at one time in the appeal. The appeal is a bit of a gamble as the sentence can go up rather than down. I’ve been in court once here due to a brawl in a night club around 27 years ago, and the judge was really fair. My friend was in court a few years back and it went through multiple appeals , I kind of got confused. Anyway I’d say his trial was very fair too. I would say it’s more of a concern as to what can go on before the trial; such as evidence at police stations (often lost)and over zealous prosecutors etc. I’d advise all foreigners to know the phone numbers of foreign affairs police. Not saying there above corruption but generally the more agencies involved the less chance of your favorable evidence getting “lost” by the local police. I think most CCTV footage is erased by most convenience stores in 11 days.

So if Taiwan has a jury trial system, will they require people to serve on juries like they do in the states? I wonder how will the people feel about that? They’re sick of conscription as it is…

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And five if you make it to the Supreme Court.


Spoiler alert: It’s all about the second opinion. Or the third… Or the twelfth.

So… I’m resurrecting this thread because recently there is a major push by the NPP and some DPP politicians to overhaul the justice system. They put their hopes on judicial reform on implementing the jury system.

The KMT, the TMD (TPP) and other opposition parties point to how the DPP have traditionally voiced support for a jury system and argues that if the DPP doesn’t pass the reforms, it is just all talk.

There are two versions of how to implement the jury:

  1. The jury determines what are the facts and does the sentencing.
  2. The jury determines what are the facts and let the judge do the sentencing.

I hate both of them.

I’ve seen how dysfunctional juries can be in the US. Determining what are facts and what sentence is appropriate requires training. Normal people would know they lack necessary training and do not want to determine another person’s fate without required expertise.

Normal people also don’t want to put their regular lives on hold to be hold up with a bunch of strangers in a hotel with outside contacts cutoff.

I just don’t see how having a jury is a positive thing in practice. It certainly sounds great on paper. However, the way I see it, the only way for it to actually function as planned requires:

  1. Better incentives for normal people to become jurors.
  2. If all people will be called to become jurors, then people need to be trained in school to do it properly.
  3. Have a more fair system, such as separating a group of 12 into 2 independent juries. One would site on each side of the court room and be separated through out the trail. Each would determine what are the facts, and if they disagreed on certain items, then the judge would step in and decide if that item is fact or not. At the end, the judge would do the sentencing.
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In the US prosecutors have been known to manipulate juries to assume guilt. Plus they have the idea that if someone is on the stand he is guilty. Also there’s racism since often black people are put on trial with a all white jury.

So how would they prevent that?

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All great points and why I’ve learned to dislike the jury system. In my proposed methods, perhaps prosecutors from either side can pick their 6 jurors, that way if there is a minority involved, we won’t have a all Han jury. Maybe the two independent juries are separated by which side selected them.

In Taiwan sentencing/trials are done with a panel of 3 judges, not just a single judge having a bad day. They are trained very well. One problem with juries is that they have little to no training and therefore often bases it on gut feelings rather than the law. Prosecutors in the US use that to their advantage.

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Yeah, especially when you have people who don’t want to be there or want to be there for the wrong reasons in the mix, which is pretty much all the time.

I’m a little conflicted on this one. A switch to jury trials sounds good in principle, but I don’t know if I want to put my fate in the hands of your average member of the Taiwanese public. I think I’ll take my chances with one of those dinosaur judges.

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