Probation revoked! The former president of the High Court illegally checked 134 personal information and was sentenced to jail in the second instance

Chen Yinan, the retired former president of the High Court, was suspected of illegally searching for personal information. A total of 134 records were searched. The first instance sentence was that he should be sentenced to 2 years in prison, suspended for 3 years, and must pay 300,000 yuan to the public treasury. The prosecutor refused to accept the sentence and appealed. The High Court today (11th) changed the sentence to 2 years and 6 months in prison. Because the sentence exceeded 2 years and did not meet the requirements for probation, Chen Yinan must be imprisoned to serve his sentence. The whole case can still be appealed.

Chen Yinan served as a judge of the High Court in 1993 and served as the president of the High Court from September 2009 to September 2011. He retired on January 16, 2022 after the whole case broke out.

The verdict pointed out that during the same tenure, Chen Yinan took advantage of his position as a civil servant to illegally inquire information multiple times using similar methods. The offense lasted for more than 2 years and 7 months, with 134 actual inquiries. After review, he was convicted of 58 crimes.

On March 31 this year, the Taipei District Court sentenced each of the crimes to forgery of documents and other crimes. He should be sentenced to 2 years in prison, suspended for 3 years, and must pay 300,000 yuan to the public treasury within one year after the judgment is finalized.

The prosecutor appealed, and the High Court held that although the 58 crimes committed by Chen Nan occurred during the same tenure, and he took advantage of the same position and committed crimes in similar ways, the crimes were quite related. When sentencing, the duplication of responsibility and the marginal effect of punishment should be considered, and appropriate discounts should be given.

The Collegiate Bench of the High Court pointed out that Chen Nan's crimes lasted for more than 2 years and 7 months, and he made 134 inquiries. Moreover, the inquiry objects, information content and purposes involved in each crime were not exactly the same, and they still had a certain degree of independence. The first instance only determined that a 2-year prison sentence should be implemented, which did not fully reflect the overall illegality and culpability of the 58 crimes accumulated, and the sentencing was not appropriate.

The collegial panel of the High Court found that the sentences imposed on each crime in the first instance were not illegal or too light, and therefore rejected this part of the prosecutor's appeal. However, considering the time of the crime, the number of crimes, and the degree of connection between the crimes, it was changed to a fixed-term imprisonment of 2 years and six months.

Since the revised sentence has exceeded 2 years and does not meet the requirements for probation stipulated in Article 74 of the Criminal Law, probation cannot be announced according to law, and the entire case can still be appealed.