Zain Dean conviction--fatal hit & run case PART II

Realizing it was risky business given my lack of Chinese knowledge, I nonetheless decided (perhaps impetuously) to take a crack at understanding part of the judgment, the sentencing part near the top, using Google Translate. Here’s what I got, for what it’s worth (obviously not guaranteeing my work):

The above looks like DWI and recidivism [edit:][strike](I don’t understand why there’s a reference to recidivism (累犯), if that’s what that word means)[/strike][end edit], with a sentence of five months.

The above looks like negligent homicide, with a sentence of one year and four months.

The above looks like fatal hit-and-run and recidivism [edit:][strike](again, I don’t understand why the recidivism, if that’s what it really means–could it mean (wild, wild, guess) something like “enhanced,” because of the fatality?)[/strike][end edit],with a sentence of one year.

Five months for DWI, plus one year and four months for negligent homicide, plus one year for hit-and-run involving a fatality, comes to two years and nine months.

That tally seems to disagree with a NOW News article’s title, which gives Mr. Dean’s sentence as two and a half years. But it appears to agree with an article on The Wild East website:

[quote]Tuesday at 4 pm, the judge at Taipei District courthouse read out the verdict in less than five minutes, and the group filed out of the courtoom. Two family members of the deceased motorcyclist left first, and then the half-dozen or more Zain Dean supporters listened in the hallway as the translator read the verdict in English.

The court handed down a guilty verdict to the Briton on three counts: 1) DUI, with a five-month sentence; 2) a hit-and-run accident (technically “leaving the site of an accident”), a one-year prison term; and 3) accidental homicide, sixteen months. After serving two years and nine months Dean faces expulsion. . . .[/quote]–Trista di Genova, “Worst-case scenario: Court rules guilty in Scotsman’s trial,” March 18, 2011

Additionally, as stated earlier, the court cites Articles 185-4 (fatal hit-and-run), 276 (negligent homicide), and 185-3 (DWI) of the Criminal Code, at the bottom of the judgment.

[Edit:] In another thread, two people wanted to know what this case had to do with the Microsoft case. I’m not one hundred percent certain, but I’m pretty certain that the use of the term recidivism in the court’s sentence was in reference to the Microsoft case. As stated elsewhere, I don’t have easy access to an English-language translation of the current Criminal Code. I have only some translated articles that might be available on the Internet and the translation of the old Criminal Code available in my 1991 edition of Major Laws of the Republic of China on Taiwan. But I’m going to take a guess that the 1991 version of the pertinent Criminal Code article on recidivism will suffice here even if it’s been amended. Here is Part I, Chapter VI, Article 47 of the Criminal Code as it was around 1991:

I think this is the part of the court’s judgment–located near the top of the judgment that Feiren posted earlier in this thread–that refers to the software case:

Another item: At the top of the judgment is the expression 公共危險 (gōnggòng wéixiǎn). Google Translate translates that as “Public Safety,” but while the first pair of characters (公共 gōnggòng) seems to mean public, the second pair (危險 wéixiǎn) seems to mean danger or dangerous. So the meaning seems to be “public danger.”

Part II, Chapter 11 of my old Criminal Code has the English title “Offenses Against Public Safety.” The Chinese title to the right side of the English one is 公共危險罪 (gōnggòng wéixiǎn zuì), which I think could be literally translated as “public danger crimes,” but which Google Translate translates as “Offenses Against Public Safety,” which is how the translator(s) of the Criminal Code in Major Laws translated it. That chapter of the Criminal Code seems to include Articles 173 through 194, meaning that it seems to include Article 185, the article which includes DWI and hit-and-run (DWI and hit-and-run don’t seem to be present in my 1991 version of the Code).

That might explain why it was thought that Mr. Dean was charged with a specific crime by that or a similar name.

The negligent homicide article is in Part II, Chapter 22, “Offenses of Homicide.” [end edit]

Just in parting, here’s an allegation which I find interesting, from the above-quoted article on The Wild East website (and please bear in mind that I’m not making this allegation myself, I’m merely quoting it):

[quote]Furthermore, critical surveillance footage from one of the city’s most camera-heavy intersections (Xinyi and Songren) had been suppressed in a case where guilt or innocence could have been easily established by this. When defense lawyer Billy Chen had pressed examining judges in the initial investigation for access to video footage, the magistrate snapped, “I’m not giving you the tapes, so stop asking me for them,” and observers believed this was not recorded in the trial transcript.[/quote] thewildeast.net/news/2011/03 … 99s-trial/