Taiwan v Wizzo — the trial

I was taken into custody on January 22nd, 2016, the prosecutor had 2 months to formally charge me or I was going to be released. The prosecutor can ask for a 2 month extension which brings the total of up to 4 months they can detain me. I had my first court date on March 19th, 2016, two days before my 2 months was up. When in custody, court days are just the worst, the fucking worst. Inmates don’t find out when they have court until the day of. The morning of, the trustees get on the microphone and read off names of the people who have court. We are lined up at the far end of the wing, searched then paraded outside to check in. After we check in, we are brought to a big room, the same room we are processed in when we first arrive. There all the inmates who have court that day are being processed. First, we change our slippers for sneakers. The only time we’re allowed sneakers are for court, they aren’t new sneakers either, they’re worn, old, dirty, and smelly. It’s fucking disgusting wearing somebody else’s worn sneakers without any socks. We wait until our name is called then, we sign and fingerprint on the master list next to our name, then are told to sit on a bench. There are 10 rows of benches, each bench fits 4 inmates, there are 2 sets of benches, 20 benches total. A C.O. reads our name off the master list, when our name is called we stand up and say our name, inmate number and our birthday. After every inmate is accounted for, we are handcuffed to each other in sets of 4, then led outside where the prison transport bus is waiting.

One our way to the bus, we are handed our lunch. Lunch is either 2 hardboiled eggs and a mantoe or 2 hardboiled eggs and 36 graham crackers. The prison bus is separated into 3 sections. The first section is where the driver and most of the C.O.’s sit, the 2nd section is where the inmates sit, and the 3rd section is where the prisoners who are in solitary (they are shackled and chained) sit, along with one or two C.O.’s to watch the 3rd section. Unlike the prison buses in the states, there aren’t rows, instead there are 2 benches on each side of the bus where the prisoners sit. Each row fits about 12 prisoners or 3 sets, 24 total give or take,. Inmates can’t scratch their heads without his neighbor raising his hand. There is no air or heating on the bus and the windows don’t open.

The courthouse is by Love River in downtown Kaohsiung and is about 30 minutes from the prison. The bus parks in the basement of the courthouse, when the inmates are making their way to the holding cells in the basement of the courthouse, we walk through a gauntlet of policemen, it must be 40 policemen standing in rows on both sides of us. Must be every policeman in the courthouse. We are brought in set by set to be searched, then placed in holding cells. They put us in the holding cells first, then we stick our hands out through the bars to be uncuffed. The cell holds 40 people, there are rows of benches for us to sit on and only one toilet. The toilet is in the corner of the room with a little wall separating it from the rest of the cell. There is graffiti on the wall, usually a person’s name and the date they were in here. There is a kettle of water placed on the outside of the cell for us to get water and paper cups to drink out of. In Taiwan, what’s strange is that they put the males and females awaiting court on the same floor, in cells across the room from each other. Some of these guys haven’t seen a woman in months, or even years, so they crowd up to the front of the cell and hang on the bars, hooting and hollering at the woman. The best part? The women holler back. It’s loud. The C.O. has to come over every 30min or so to tell everybody to shut up. In addition to the men and women’s holding cells for those awaiting trial, there are separate cells for those that are awaiting to be questioned, and those who just posted bail. Inmates are called one by one for our scheduled court date. The court is upstairs on the 2nd and 3rd floors, inmates are walked up the stairs escorted by two police officers, one in front of me and one behind. Once to the courtroom, the inmate is uncuffed and sat in the defendant’s seat.

The courtroom kind of resembles an American courtroom. There is one row of seats in the back of the room. There is a barrier with a swinging door that separates the observers from the rest of the people, just like the west. The prosecutor and the defendant face each other and not the judge, unlike the west. The prosecutor and the defense attorney both wear robes, my lawyer had a black robe with silver trim and the prosecutor had pink robe with silver trim. The prosecutor was a female. The Judge sits on an elevated bench with two recorders (one was male the other was female) in front. The Judge also happened to be female. My translator was terrible, he was the same translator I had the first time. When I saw him I just shook my head and thought “I’m fucked.” I complained in the middle of court proceedings, I said “You guys can’t understand him but his English is terrible. Is there anybody else?” The Judge replied “No.” “If he’s my translator then I don’t want a translator.” “You asked for a translator and we got you one.” The translator was getting upset and said “You don’t understand me because you can’t understand English.” “Just because you think you can speak English, doesn’t really mean that you can.” Then one policeman leaned over and whispered to me (in Chinese) “you can’t speak English, you can’t speak Chinese, you are fucked.” I glared at him and he told me to pay attention to the judge. At this point the judge told everybody to be quiet. On March 19th, 2016 I was officially charged with smuggling and trafficking a schedule 2 narcotic for distribution and sales, the minimum was 7 years, and it carries a maximum sentence of life. 7 years to life was what I was looking at. It was my first offense in Taiwan, they reduced my minimum to 5 years, 5 years to life. When the arrangement was over, the cop put the handcuffs on me and escorted me down the stairs back to the holding cells.

There are two different buses back to the prison, the first bus is at 4pm, the second one is at 9pm. For those who have court in the morning, they’re on the first bus back to the prison. Those that have an afternoon court are on the second bus. When it’s time to go back to the prison, the guard calls out the inmates who are scheduled to leave and we are chained together in sets of 4. The path to the prison bus is the same as it is in the morning, we walk through a gauntlet of police officers. When back at the prison we are strip searched and cavity searched. Then we put back our borrowed sneakers, do a roll call and line up according to our wing. By the time we get back to our wing/cell, it’s 5pm and we’ve missed dinner. The C.O. or a trustee gives you your cigarettes for the day and back to the cell you go. For a 30 minute court session, we’re gone all day from 8am to 5pm because we have to wait for everybody to have their day in court. We get strip searched twice and cavity searched once. Court days are just the fucking worst.

March 29th, 2016 was the 1st date of my two-part trial. I got a different translator this time, thank the lord, he was a 30-something man. I think he was an American Born Taiwanese, his English was fluent, but I don’t think his Chinese was very good. He was stuttering and stammering when he would speak in Chinese. Anything is an improvement over my first translator. I saw the evidence the state had against me, which wasn’t very much. The state had my travel log to show where I came from and how many times I’ve been to Taiwan in my life. They showed me my luggage, my edibles, and my coerced confession. They also had a log of some messages I had sent to a few friends showing them pictures of edibles, but we didn’t discuss price or anything of that sort, the messages were really vague. What they didn’t have was a witness, in Taiwan I don’t have the right to face my accuser in court. The snitch was too scared show up in court because there’s no witness protection in Taiwan. There was nobody to prove I had an intent to distribute. Because I confessed, the prosecutor lowered my minimum sentence to 3 and ½ years. Also, because I confessed, my trial would only be two parts. My lawyer and I had requested bail, the judge said she was going to ask the other judges and get back to me. I got a letter a week later in the mail saying that bail was denied. I wasn’t too sad about not getting bail, I reasoned the faster I do my time the faster I can finish and get back to the states.

April 19th, 2016 was the last part of my two-part trial. For my final day in court, I happened to get the best translator. She was an older women 40–50, she had an accent when she was speaking English, but she was fluent, she translated everything I said word for word, and she did the same from Mandarin to English. This is what made me realize that translators are a crapshoot, some are good and some are terrible, and there’s a big discrepancy. It’s surprising, but then again it’s not. The state doesn’t care about it’s inmates. For this last part of the trial, there were three judges instead of one. There was an older presiding judge and two younger judges, the presiding judge sat in the middle and was flanked by the two younger judges. All three of my judges and my prosecutor happened to be females, it felt like an episode of Jessica Jones and I was the villain. I saw all the evidence the state had against me (again) the travel log, luggage, my edibles, my coerced, doctored confession and the messages between my friends and I. Things proceeded pretty quickly because my case is pretty simple, smuggling is black and white, either you have it or you don’t and I was caught with it, red-handed.

The presiding judge asked if I had any final words to say before they sentence me. I used this time to go on a tirade. I said “Yes, yes I do. I just want to say that I’m not a bad person, I just made a mistake. I want to be clear I confessed to smuggling it, I did it and I’m sorry, but I don’t confess to anything else. I was bullied by the police and coerced into the rest of the confession. Matter of fact, if you check out the tape, there is a gap because when I kept asking for a lawyer or choosing to remain silent, the agents stopped the tape, took me outside and threatened me. Also, if you look at the tape you can see portions where a supervisor comes in, looks at my responses, and changes my answer.” “What do you mean you were bullied?” “Exactly what I said, I wasn’t treated fairly or justly. Look at when I got arrested, I was on a 15 hour plane ride, I didn’t sleep on the plane. I was arrested at 2:30am, by the time I got to a cell, it was 3 maybe 3:30am. There’s no bed, I laid on the floor, there was no pillow, no blanket, and they kept the lights on the whole time. I was woken up at 6:30am for no reason, they didn’t interrogate me until 1:30pm. For no reason, I was kept up the whole day. That’s over 24 hours without any sleep before they interrogated me. During the interrogation I was denied a lawyer, and I didn’t have a proper translator.” “We’re going to go over your entire confession and you tell us what you said and what was changed. Why didn’t you bring this up earlier?” “I tried, but my translators were terrible and nobody was listening. You guys don’t care. It seemed like all everybody cares about is getting their face in the news and their name in the papers. This isn’t justice, this is a mockery of the justice system. This is a miscarriage of justice. A travesty. ” We went over the confession line by line and I told her what I said and what was changed without my knowledge. After I went on my tirade the judge’s attitude seemed to do a 180, they knew what they (the police) did was fucked up, or at least I hope they did.

Afterwards I said “I confess to smuggling, I’m not trying to get out of it, I did it and I’m willing to accept the consequences. But you’re having trouble proving sales and distribution because I didn’t do it. If I had known it was going to be this serious, I would of never brought the edibles over, I thought it was just going to be a fine or the state would confiscate my edibles.” The judge laughed and sarcastically said “You are stupid. Is it your first time in Taiwan, mr Tsung?” “No, but it’s not legal in every state in America, yet the airlines still let me fly with it. I have a license and it’s my medicine, if I were to fly into a state where it’s not legal, they would just confiscate it or give me a fine. It’s not jail time, and it’s certainly not years of jail time. I crossed through 2 customs with it, Los Angeles and Hong Kong, they all knew I had it. I wasn’t hiding it, how can I hide 76 bags? It was in plain sight. If you want to blame anybody, blame customs. It seemed like the police were more concerned with getting their name in the paper or getting on TV then they were about the truth.” “Well, what would you like your sentence to be?” “I would like to pay a fine.” “We can’t do that, you’re going to have to do time.” “Ok, then I want to be charged with smuggling a prescription drug and I would like the minimum sentencing for smuggling a prescription drug.” I also requested to do my time in the south, in the same prison I was at because it is closest to my family. All foreigners are suppose to go to Taoyuan Prison, but that’s 3 hours from family in Kaohsiung and inconvenient if anything were to happen to me. My lawyer chimed in asking for bail so I could see my grandma and spend some time with her before I get sentenced. The presiding judge asked me “How do you feel about bail, what do you want to do?” “If you give me bail, I promise I won’t run.” “If you don’t get bail, do you wish to come to your sentencing?” “If I don’t get bail, I don’t want to come to my sentencing, my lawyer can come and tell me.” “Bail is set at 50,000 NTD($1544), do you have that?” “Yes.” “Ok, bail is granted.” “For bail, you’re not required to check in, and you may leave Kaohsiung and travel around Taiwan, but you are not allowed to leave the country. We will mail you your sentence, where and when to surrender yourself.”

After bail was granted, the police walked me down to the holding area, I was not cuffed, it was a nice feeling. I was put in a separate holding cell, one for the inmates who bailed out. My dad was at the courthouse and didn’t have any cash on him because we didn’t know that I was going to get bail. I just got a letter saying I would not be granted bail. It took them a few hours to go to the bank and come back with the bail money, it took so long in fact that the guards downstairs were taunting me. “How come you’re not bailed out yet? Maybe you won’t get bailed out after all, we’ll just take you back to the prison.” Assholes.

The first people I saw when I stepped out of custody was my dad and my uncle. The sun was so bright. I hadn’t experienced sun or fresh air in 3 months. We smoked a cigarette outside the courthouse. They took me back to the prison so I could grab my personal things, then home, when I got home my grandma gave me a big hug and told me, “I was so worried, if I was younger, I’d beat you.” “In that case, I’m happy you’re old grandma. I love you. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be alright.”

You know what’s a cool side effect of this blogging thing? I’ve got friends that I lost touch with, people I haven’t spoken to in years, who’ve read the blog and reached out with kind words. Words of love and support. I didn’t expect that to happen or that so many people would take time out of their busy day to read this. It’s pretty cool. Makes me want to open up and write more.