Taiwan’s Supreme Court has cleared a former fishing vessel caption of drug trafficking in a final verdict handed down recently after he was initially found guilty in 2012 and spent eight years behind bars.

Chen Huo-cheng (???) was found guilty by a district court in 2012 for shipping six kilograms of heroin, which were stored in three DVD players, onboard a Kaohsiung-registered fishing vessel he operated on the high seas off the Philippines in 2009.

He was sentenced to 18 years in jail for drug distribution in 2012, which he began serving the same year and was not released until 2020 after his repeated appeals to the Kaohsiung Branch Court of Taiwan High Court were heard.

The next year, the high court ruled that Chen was not guilty of the charge after the judges determined he had no knowledge of the drugs when two Taiwanese businessmen based in the Philippines asked him to facilitate the shipment and that he did not earn anything in return.

Prosecutors appealed the not guilty ruling, which led to the case being heard in the Supreme Court. The court overturned the appeal on Aug. 17 this year.

Taiwan Innocence Project, which had assisted Chen in the case, issued a statement Tuesday to express gratitude to the high court and the supreme court for their efforts to address wrongful convictions.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel