A Strange Justice in Taiwan's Chen Shui-bian Case

Wednesday June 13, by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

Scroll back down to April 13, and see the concusion of how fingers are pointing at the prosecutors for cutting what some may call corrupt deals to get and keep Chen Shui-bian in jail. The only two real witnesses in Chen's case that have been used to convict him on accepting bribes are Jeffrey Koo Jr. and Diana Chen.

In Jeffrey Koo's case, there was an ironic twist where the prosecutors appeared to threaten him with not being allowed back into Taiwan unless he stated that he gave a bribe to Chen; once that was done in the strange twists of the law, only the one accepting the bribe, not the one giving it is guilty. Koo went along with this, but then after his testimony was used to convict Chen, Koo's lawyers stated that the testimony was illegally extorted and denied its veracity.

Now the same thing has come up with Diana Chen, the other person that allegedly gave Chen Shui-bian a bribe. Diana had said it was a donation and not a bribe; then came the deal. The prosecutors harassed her so that she would agree that she committed perjury by admitting that it was now a bribe and not a donation. In return, they would then not prosecute her but give her a suspended jail term for her perjury.

Is justice blind? In Taiwan, it seems to be color blind, i.e. anyone green is convicted and anyone blue is set free. There are continued indications that this has been a trial where many laws have been broken just to get a conviction.