[2021/01/12]
To improve judicial transparency and to reflect citizens’ legal opinions, the Citizen Judges Act was established and published on 12 August 2020, allowing citizens to participate in criminal trials alongside professional judges in order to gain a personal experience in the proceedings and hearing of case evidence, and to engage in discussion with the judges and reach a judgment together.
The citizen participative trial system provided under the Citizen Judges Act will be implemented on 1 January, 2023.
Citizens have the right and obligation to serve as citizen judges in accordance with the law, except persons expressly excluded by the law or granted with the right of refusal by the law.Any citizen of the Republic of China over 23 years old and who has lived within the jurisdiction of a district court for more than 4 months is qualified to be selected as a citizen judge.
Citizen judges will participate in criminal trials alongside professional judges for first-instance criminal case trials prosecuted by prosecutors (public prosecutions) and heard by district courts, including:
- Offenses carrying a prison term of at least 10 years (such as homicide, major corruption, etc.)
- Intentional offenses resulting in death (such as drunk driving resulting in death, assault resulting in death, etc.)
However, in case of special circumstances in any case of such type, the court may rule on a case-by-case basis not to apply the citizen participative trial procedure.No juvenile criminal case and no case under the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act will be covered by the citizen participative trial system.
In any cases under the citizen participative trial procedure, the defendant should select an attorney as his/her representative.
A panel of 6 citizen judges and 3 professional judges is formed.The duties of citizen judges are the same as those of the professional judges in principle.They shall exercise their duties independently in accordance with the law and shall not be subject to any interference.
Citizen judges are selected from qualified citizens.If deemed necessary by the court, 1 to 4 backup citizen judges may also be selected to participate in the trial and to fill any vacancy in the order of sequence if any citizen judge cannot perform his/her duties.Backup citizen judges should not participate in the discussion, nor express their opinions during final adjudication (auditing only).Otherwise, the rest of their duties are the same as those of the citizen judges and they also enjoy the same protections and rights.
Cases subject to citizen participative trials will following this sequence of proceedings:
(1) Preparatory proceeding
(2) Citizen judge selection proceeding
(3) Swearing-in of citizen judges
(4) Judge-in-charge explains the case trial proceeding before the trial starts
(5) Starting of the trial
(6) Evidence investigation
(7) Cross examination
(8) Final adjudication
(9) Announcement of judgment
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