Chief, as I'm sure you already know, you can't sue anyone in Taiwan for libel unless you can prove intention to defame and there is some financial injury as a result. The media in Taiwan are well protected by the law and as a result can print pretty much anything they want to and get away with it. The Chinese and Chinglish papers here don't bother to check facts simply because there's no incentive (financial or otherwise) to do so.

On a side note, Dean's wife holding her nose while passing the photographers was kind of cool. "Rude, vile pigs" they are indeed.

One thing I often think about this, is this the kind of guy who would try to pin something like this on someone else? That takes a lot of nerve, for sure there are those who might do it but not everybody. Much less on an employee of an apparently sketchy club. Also the alleged "other driver" is playing it really low-key. Maybe that's just the best move for him, but I can kind of imagine him raising a real shitstorm.

Latest news, and, of course, this isn't "official", that is it hasn't appeared in any of the papers, you know, like the one where the guy's being specifically labeled as having commited an act for which he has yet to be tried, but latest news is they're taking forever to go to trial because the already circumstantial evidence is so weak, no Prosecutor will touch the case, it being pretty apparent it'll get thrown out the first day.
A forensic expert has identified numerous places where the security cam tapes from the KTV were clearly tampered with, and not very skillfully, either.
Upon cursory examination, none of the KTV employee's stories matched, and were consistently contradicted by their cell phone records.
The driver kid's deposition was wildly inconsistent and apparently collapsed upon even basic follow up questioning.
More than 5 Prosecutors have passed on going to trial, and it's apparently been hot-potatoed down to like the most junior staff, like under-30s, and they don't even want it.
As always, not stating guilt or otherwise, but there cetainly isn't, as some of us discussed previously, anything even remotely like a case here.

As for dozing through the incident, I think ZD indicated that the kid pretty much had to shake him awake upon arriving near his home.

And in any case, ordinary sleep and drunken stupors are very inconsistent things. You can be dead to the world one moment, and even the sound of a lightning strike won't rouse you, and on the verge of waking up the next moment, with little more than a shake, a "Hey", or a change in acceleration causing you to come to.

It's all about the evidence folks..everything else is just speculation.

How right you are...alhough the local papers seem to not agree...

There's a lot yet to be established, and I would figure that given the zillions of cameras around downtown streets that there would be one that would show the moment when the drivers were changed or would show when the KTV guy started to head back to his place of work.

There is room for a situation in which both the KTV guy and Dean think that they're each innocent of wrongdoing. If Dean was so blitzed that he didn't know he hit someone after he took over the wheel (like those numerous recorded instances of people who drive home under conditions of being drunk or senile with pedestrians stuck in their windshields or in their grills), then he really could arrive back home not knowing that he'd done it.

And knowing the crushing ineptitude that sometimes combines with the corruptness and paranoia of the gangster minds, I could also well imagine the proprietors of the KTV having some employee who would take it into their heads to alter the time stamps to "shore up" an already functional alibi. I mean, it's not like the privately owned security cameras are really there to protect anybody there in the first place -- the cameras exist so the management can keep an eye on things. Are the cameras even set with correct time stamping in the first place? I'd even have my doubts on that -- they'd probably have to fake the time stamps just to have something other than "00:00 01/01/00" on there.

Provided that Dean's car really was the one that hit the scooter rider, and of course Lord knows it's not the only black Mercedes car in Taiwan that was probably on the roads that night, then it probably comes down to when did Dean take over as driver of the car? If the driver switch happened on any of the zillions of roads covered by these security cameras, then it would probably be captured somewhere, even if not very clearly. And then you'd have to corroborate that with the footage of other cameras. But then, a lot depends on how long they keep the footage around. (The cameras in my old neighborhood connected into the local village head's office, and according to him they only kept footage for a set period of a few weeks.)

Dean claims in his statement that the driver switch happened at a particular place within a short distance of his home, and that would be a good place to look. Likewise, in the area of the KTV there would also likely be footage from the streets.

But then if there is no security camera footage that can help out, we get back to the fact that both Dean and the KTV guy were behind the wheel at some point. One of them was utterly blotto and shouldn't have ever been behind a wheel, and it's odd that Dean admits that he (Dean) was the one who insisted upon taking over the driving. In other words, according to Dean's version of events the KTV guy would've been perfectly fine with driving the whole distance if Dean hadn't insisted on taking over.

While I might almost buy the arguments about drunken unconsciousness being somehow "unpredictable", I might buy it if the car had hit a pedestrian but not where the car had demolished the substantially heavier mass of a scooter.

Ive been following this thread, but refrained from posting. If there is any substance to the above the police in my opinion should start an independent inquiry.

It should have been trivial for the prosecutors to prove their case, take video from the club and correlate it with credit card transactions of patrons would have seemed one way to establish time authenticity.

An inability to prove the case speaks volumes, proof of tampering with evidence is deserving of an independent review.

I have to admit, I think the entire thing smells off. At this point, the only people I really feel sorry for is the family of the bloke that was killed. Regardless of who the culprit was, I think they deserve some justice at least...
The cops should be all over this, and I agree with your sentiments. It shouldn't be that hard to get the evidence from credit cards, cameras etc.

It looks like the judges have reached the end of their patience and earlier this week required the prosecutors to present their body of evidence.
The prosecution's sole exhibit is a video segment showing Mr. Dean getting into the passenger side of his car and someone else, dressed as an employee, getting in the driver's side. Apparently the video isn't clear enough to identify the employee.
That is the full extent of the prosecution's evidence.
The judge has made the disclosure public, an unusual move.
More than likely to avoid criticism when he throws the case out.

An interesting side note is that the owner of the KTV, who had earlier sworn under oath that he had gone home long before the time when Mr. Dean left, can be clearly seen on the video right there all along.