COR Point 66 Administration of Justice (Articles 9, 10 and 14)
Article 33 of Taiwan’s now defunct “Publications Act” mandated that “publications cannot comment on ongoing investigations or litigations which are still under trial, judicial officials handling such cases or persons involved in such litigations and cannot publish argumentation in court on cases which are banned from open disclosure.” Subsequently, this law was revoked because of its excessive restrictions on freedom of expression. At present, Article 18 of Taiwan’s Freedom of Government Information Law states: “Government information shall be restricted from disclosure or provision to the public making available to the public or provision in the following situations:....2. When disclosure or provision to the public will obstruct the investigation, prosecution, or law enforcement of a crime, impair the fair trial of a criminal defendant, or injure other people's life, body, freedom or property.” Therefore, under the scope of law, Taiwan still is attempting to prohibit news media from “trial by the media” and to realize the presumption of innocence before proven guilty through this provision which bans provision of further information to the media.
In fact, cases in which judicial trial proceedings are influenced by the media are still quite frequent. One example was the “Mama Mouth Cafe” murder case (also known as the Bali District double homicide in New Taipei City). Two persons, Lu Ping-hung and Ou Shih-chen, who were released for lack of evidence of their involvement, had difficulty sustaining normal lives due to intense pressure from the news media.131 In addition, in January 2014, in the case of truck driver Chang Teh-cheng who rammed his truck into the Office of the President, it is also believed that concerned personnel informed the media that Chang had decided to ram his truck into the presidential compound due to difficulties in his marriage and with his family. However, most cases of family violence also involve structural social factors such as stigmatization of unemployment, gender stereotyping and class discrimination.132 It was therefore unimaginable that the police could have, for the sake of slandering Chang Teh-cheng’s motives for ramming the Office of the President, arbitrarily leaked information personal information about individuals involved in familial violence cases to the news media. This action not only gravely violated the right of privacy of all persons involved, but also fuelled even greater social stigmatization and absolutely violated the fundamental principles of coping with family violence.
Although some scholars and experts have proposed adding provisions to “severely sanction officials who leak information on criminal cases to the news media,” there has not been any progress in this direction. No such bills have been submitted to the Legislative Yuan for review and neither judicial or executive government agencies have provided any such draft bills.
- See “Bali double homicide suspect indicted,” Taipei Times, April 13, 2013.
- See “Truck driver indicted in Presidential Office crash,” China Post, March 7, 2014.