I guess Chen Shui Bian’s son in law’s (I forget the little worm’s name) District Court verdict is due out later today (or maybe already released). As a public service I would remind the sports fans who follow Taiwanese politics that District Court proceedings are nothing more than a “pre-season warm up game”. District Court trials are a chance for the two sides to “scrimmage” and see how “their plays” work. The grounds for appeal in Taiwan are broad, both the prosecutor and defense can appeal (this is quite different than California where the prosecutor can appeal on only a very, very, few issues) and the High Court is not bound by the factual or legal determinations made by the District Court. Although the Judicial Yuan refuses to release statistics of the reversal rates, my solid guess would be at least 50% and probably closer to 75% of the cases are reversed by the High Court.
Also too, the legal folklore in Taiwan is that the High Court is where all the judicial shenanigans take place. It is viewed as “a given” by most scholars of Taiwanese legal history (including me) that the High Court was specifically designed to be the “corruption bottleneck” under the KMT/Martial Law system. And by that I mean the place where political pressure and bribes can change outcomes.
Many pundits in private will say that has not changed. I personally am of two minds about the level of judicial corruption and amenability to political pressure of the High Court. What I would say is it varies among the branches of the High Court with Taipei, probably (note the qualifier probably) being the most independent. Although note, that is in a relative sense.
In any event happy court holidays, I have to dash off to the Taipei District Court to teach…legal ethics. (really!, although I realize that is a case of pissing in the wind if there ever was one).
Legal Ethics Teacher Brian