Recently, in order to handle the simulated trial of the "People's Judge System", Taoyuan District Court notified a 101-year-old woman to serve as a "People's Judge". The family complained to the district court three times, indicating that the old woman lived in a nursing home due

Source: Voice of the Straits

Is there a 101-year-old dementia judge in the world? There is in Taiwan.

Recently, in order to handle the simulated trial of the "People's Judge System", Taoyuan District Court notified a 101-year-old woman to serve as a "People's Judge". The family complained to the district court three times, indicating that the old woman lived in a nursing home due to severe dementia and could not serve as a "People's Judge". However, she was repeatedly ignored by Taoyuan District Court and repeatedly issued notices, which made the family feel troubled.

The opposition party criticized the entire process of being outrageous and exaggerated, criticizing the "court of courts", and the judicial reform became more and more bizarre.

Taiwan's judicial system has always been criticized and even regarded as a source of chaos. The court has made judgments that violate reason from time to time, causing social uproar. The name of "dinosaur judge" spread like wildfire. After Tsai Ing-wen came to power, she took advantage of the negative perception of society to begin to "reform" the judicial system.

The two major directions of reform are "greening" and "democratization" . Tsai Ing-wen lets her cousin husband serve as the president of " Supreme Administrative Court ". It is impossible for the confiscated Kuomintang party property to be taken back through legal means. This is an example of "green".

On December 25, 2020, Tsai Ing-wen issued a personnel dispatch order, and was specially appointed as the President of the Supreme Administrative Court Wu Minghong was promoted to President. This Wu Minghong is not an ordinary person. His wife is called Lin Meizhu (first from left). Lin Meizhu has a cousin named Tsai Ing-wen. Picture from the Internet

" democratization " refers to imitating the Japanese judge system and establishing a "people's judge system" so that ordinary people can also serve as judges and hear cases with professional judges. The 2020 "People's Judges Law" was promulgated by Tsai Ing-wen and implemented on January 1, 2023. It was boasted by the DPP as the "start of judicial democratization."

The above news events are a simulated trial of the court before the official implementation of the system.

"People's Judge" called it "make judicial judgments more down-to-earth and meet social expectations." However, after the implementation in Japan, there were many controversies. Taiwan's imitation of the East will inevitably lead to many disadvantages. This time, a 101-year-old dementia judge has already predicted the chaos in the future.

First explain the characteristics of the "people's judge" system.

"people's judge" is not a "jury"

"people's judge system" is promoted by civil groups such as the "Civil Judicial Reform Foundation". The political stance of these militia groups is almost pro-green, and is also a civil organization that extremely claims human rights. After the DPP took office, the head of the "Civil Judicial Reform Foundation" was promoted to the "Supervision Committee" and frequently used its power to interfere in the judicial act of green camp people to escort the escort.

Picture from the Internet

In fact, the DPP has always supported the "jury system" and is also written in the "party platform". Later, it turned to the forced promotion of the "people's judge system", which is an example of the exchange of interests with pro-green militia.

Compared with the jury system implemented in the United States, jurors are selected by lawyers on the pro-defense side, but the "people's judge" was decided by the court's draw , and forced to participate in , and it is not allowed to refuse.

Secondly, jury 0Secondly, jury 0 Adopting a "unanimous resolution" whether the defendant is guilty, the "people's judge" shall adopt a "majority resolution" convicted by 2/3 of the "majority resolution". The statutory trial is 9 of 6 "people's judges" and 3 professional judges. Two-thirds are 6 judges, including at least one professional judge.

Third, the trial scope is the lightest case where the sentence is more than 10 years of fixed-term imprisonment, or intentional crime leads to death.

Fourth, the jury can only decide whether to be guilty or not, and cannot decide to sentence, but the "people's judge" can participate in sentencing decision-making .

"People's Judge System" is not "democratization", but "populization".

Should judicial judgments be "down-to-earth"? This is a big question.

Whether the juror system or the "people's Judge System" aims to "eliminate possible corruption in the judicial system under authority" and "defend human rights." Therefore, taking Europe and the United States as an example, these human rights claims are often beneficial to the defendants when they are implemented in the judicial process.

Contradictory is that when Taiwanese society criticizes judicial corruption, it is often a case of light sentence of defendants. So, is the "people's judge system" beneficial to the defendant? Or is it unfavorable to the defendant? This depends on how high Taiwan society has a high level of awareness of "human rights".

From the perspective of public opinion in various major social cases, the Taiwanese people are deeply influenced by the simple understanding of "punishing evil and eliminating evil" and the guidance of the media trend, which makes the defendant's image either a great traitor or a great evil or a grievance for all eternity. Therefore, the so-called "down-to-earth" actually leads judicial cases to a simple and crude way.

Just in this aspect, it denies the existence significance of professional justice, and returns to the era of public trials by the ancient micro society. The emergence of the judicial system is to respond to the increasingly complex social structure. It is better to make the judgment more "intuitive" than to make the judgment more "prudent".

In other words, the "people's judge system" is not so much a "populism" of the judiciary as a "populism" of the judiciary.

Taiwan, which is "democratic", can only elect "rotten apples" politicians now. How can we expect the "democratic" judiciary to make a bad judgment?

However, the reason why Taiwan’s judiciary is “democratic” is because of the corruption of the judicial system. In addition to the professional judgment deviating from common sense, there is also the rigid and corrupt of the entire system. In this news incident, the Taiwanese court will stage a terrible drama for you.

"Administrative Corruption" of the Court

According to the "People's Judges Law", citizens who are not legal professional, are not military and police, have no criminal record, and are not involved in the case, and are citizens over 23 years old are qualified to serve as "People's Judges".

In addition, people selected by the court will not refuse (except for students in school), but those who are over 70 years old and have major illnesses and are unable to perform their duties can resign as "People's Judge". The provision of

is actually inexplicable. Even if is a professional judge, according to the "Judges Law", if you are over 70 years old, you can no longer engage in trial business. Why is there no age limit for "people's judges"? not to mention the absurdity of letting the demented elderly be judged.

Furthermore, Taiwan does not have a professional judge with a 23-year-old trial qualification. This is because the threshold is education and judicial practice experience. It is impossible for a 23-year-old judge to appear. So why can a 23-year-old "people's judge" be accepted? At the age of 23, you can have a genius, but it is impossible to have enough life experience to judge the case. For the three, voters can refuse to vote , so why should they not refuse to serve as "people's judge"?

The above three points alone are enough to show the absurd of Taiwan’s judicial “democratization”.

However, the court did not find it outrageous to notify the dementia man Rui to participate in the case, but instead brazenly stated that this move was not illegal or improper. It was only deeply disturbed by the family's repeated statements that the dementia old woman was not suitable for her, and admitted that there were some improvements, and she also said shamelessly, "This is the meaning of the simulated trial."

is clearly the court's administrative procedures is rigid and corrupt, causing disturbance to the people, and the unrecognition of mistakes demonstrates the arrogance of authority and the blind observance of unreasonable dogmas.

, the laughable ignorance makes people wonder if the judicial system is taking roundabout resistance against the "people's judge system" and exposes the disadvantages in advance?

Do professional judges welcome "people's judges"?

The judicial system is affirming the conflict between the "people's judge system", because the trial of major criminal cases is inevitably complicated, which means that professional judges need to pay the cost of running-in with the "people's judge".

A significant phenomenon in Taiwan’s judicial system is that cases are piled up everywhere, and the pressure of “quantity” affects the quality of trial. Anyone who has run through the court knows that the entire judicial system is enough to describe it in four words: acts cheaply and .

Judges, prosecutors and even lawyers, in order to quickly digest cases, cannot escape the trap of "doing cheaply", thus giving people the impression of hasty handling, which has always been at the bottom of the public's trust in the judiciary.

Professional judges who cannot handle ordinary cases have to spend time running in with the "people's judges", which only aggravates the disadvantages of delaying the case for several years. Not only can't promote the quality of the trial, but it will also increase the controversy of the judgment.

But on the other hand, for the bizarre judgment, the past people criticized only professional judges, but now professional judges are happy to shirk responsibility to the "people's judges", which will weaken the judge's sense of responsibility and be more "cheap."

Therefore, generally speaking, professional judges will not welcome "people's judges". After all, veterans do not like to spend time educating newbies, and there is no job allowance . Human nature is worse than less. Although "people's judges" can share social doubts, it is rare to judges that will attract social attention after all, so it cannot offset the additional efforts of professional judges to educate newcomers.

Japan's experience of "democratization"

So then, how does the Japanese people feel about the "referee system"? Do you think the judiciary has become more suitable for the people?

According to the poll, 39.3% of the people felt that "non-expert referees will give inappropriate judgments"; 31.2% believed that "the awareness of self-thinking on crime and public security issues will be improved"; 27.6% believed that "national feelings can be reflected in the trial, and national understanding and trust in the justice will be deepened"; 27% believed that "the procedures and judgments of criminal trials will become easier to understand."

data above shows that nearly 40% of those who hold negative views, and most of those who hold positive views are less than 30%. It can be seen that the "democratization" of justice has its deep-rooted drawbacks, so it cannot gain universal trust.

In addition, only 5.6% of the people were willing to participate in the judgment, 73.4% were unwilling to participate; 44.5% were unable to make calm judgments, 42% were unsure about the trial procedures, 40.5% were unconfidence to express their opinions in front of the judge, and those were afraid of being resented by the defendant (39.1%). The above data of

shows that ordinary people have no interest and no confidence in taking the responsibility of judges, because even if they have a salary, it is a burden to the public, and they are even afraid of being retaliated against by the persons involved in the case.

Japan judicial personnel support the abolition of the "referee system".

Conclusion

Because the judge is not good, letting the public participate in the trial is like "I can't do it well, then you can do it" is a foolish move in itself. Not only can't solve the "bad" problem at all, but it also leads to another risk of "not knowing whether it's good or not".

Correct the source. To improve the quality of judicial personnel, we must improve the quality of judicial personnel. In addition to the influence of education and social uprightness, "bad lawsuits" cases should be reduced in professional practice and save judicial resources, so as to give law enforcement officers more room to promote the quality of case handling.

does not want to solve the key factors of judicial corruption, but just letting laymen intervene and attempts to calm public grievances will only make the quality of justice worse, the verdicts are more outrageous, and the public grievances are deeper. Perhaps, the court's selection of dementia Rui as a "people's judge" is to clarify this point in a vague way.

, and pro-green extremist human rights organizations "full-time" have made stupid moves, which is also the source of chaos in Taiwan.