Capital punishment in Taiwan
[1] Before 2000, Taiwan had a relatively high execution rate, when strict laws surrounding capital punishment were still in effect.
[2] However, controversial legal cases during the 1990s and the changing attitudes of officials towards abolition of the death penalty resulted in a significant drop in the number of executions, with only three in 2005 and none between 2006 and 2009.
[8] Other special laws which define capital offenses include: In practice, all death sentences and executions since 2003 have been imposed for murder-related offences.
The last non-homicide-related execution in Taiwan took place in October 2002, in the case of a Pingtung County fisherman who was accused of trafficking 295 kg of heroin in 1993.
[21] Should any new evidence or procedural flaw that influences the verdict to be discovered during the three-day period, the condemned inmate may make a plea to the Ministry of Justice.
[28] The condemned prisoner is then injected with strong anaesthetic to cause unconsciousness, laid flat on the ground, face down, and shot.
[37] The Death Penalty Procedural Rules of Taiwan used to state that inmates who have agreed to donate their organs are shot in the head.
In 2012, The Ministry of Justice announced that they would no longer approve any requests from death row inmates to donate organs;[38] Then in 2020, all relevant statutes were invalidated.
In one case in 1991 a prospective donor was found to be still breathing unaided when being prepared for organ collection in the Taipei Veterans General Hospital.
This case caused the Taipei Veterans General Hospital to refuse organ collection of executed inmates for eight years.
[42] In March 1991, a Hsichih couple, Wu Ming-han and Yeh Ying-lan, were found robbed and murdered inside their apartment.
He confessed to the murder after investigators discovered evidence of him breaking in and entering the house, but police doubted he could have killed two adults so easily and brutally without help.
The other three defendants were prosecuted under the Act for the Control and Punishment of Banditry, which stipulated compulsory death sentences for their crimes if found guilty.
According to the procedure, the three should then have been executed by shooting as soon as possible, but Minister of Justice Ma Ying-jeou refused to sign their death warrants and returned the whole case back to the Supreme Court in hope of a retrial, citing shortcomings such as: Between 1995 and 2000, Ma Ying-jeou and his three successors filed several retrial requests with the Supreme Court, but all were rejected.
Meantime, this case drew the attention of Amnesty International and was widely broadcast throughout the world, nicknamed as "the Hsichih Trio".
On January 13, 2003, the Taiwan High Court passed a verdict that they were not guilty and released them, but the victims' families were unwilling to accept this and appealed.
[43] On June 29, 2007, the Taiwan High Court once again found the trio guilty and condemned them to death, but surprisingly did not put them in custody[43] because "the 3 defendants are already famous worldwide and will be identified in any place", the first such case in the ROC history.
On November 12, 2010, the Taiwan High Court delivered another verdict, revoking the previous decision and finding the three not guilty, "as there was no proof for the crime they were accused of.
The Supreme Court of the Republic of China sentenced Lu to death in June 2000 but his family noted several suspicious points:[50] Despite these suspicious points, the Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan ordered Lu Cheng's execution on September 7, 2000, just one day before that year's Mid-Autumn Festival.
President Ma Ying-jeou and the Ministry of National Defense have made a public apology to the family of former Air Force Pvt.
In early April 2013, the Taiwan High Court determined that Hsu was not guilty of the crime after all, and he was released from prison immediately.
The court found that Hsu was mentally challenged and could not write, operating on the emotional and intellectual level of a child between the ages of 9 and 12 years old, and that he had made seven confessions that were all contradicted by physical evidence and official autopsy findings.
[52] The Taipei District Prosecutors' Office announced that once they read the ruling, they would determine if it was appropriate to appeal the acquittal to the Supreme Court,[52] but as of August 2020, there have been no further legal developments in the case.
The officials who handled the original investigation that led to Chiang's execution were protected from prosecution by the statute of limitations for public employees.
Chiou was reported to be blindfolded, tied up, forced to sit on ice, shocked by electric batons, and made to swallow pepper water during his interrogations, some of which lasted up to 10 hours.
[63] During the Republic of China (Taiwan) 9–13 July 2002 state visit to the United States of America, US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the Taiwanese Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan had made a policy statement of moving towards abolishing the death penalty using a phased approach.
Until March 2010, a total of 44 prisoners given death sentences by the Supreme Court were detained by the Ministry but Wang still publicly announced her strong opposition to capital punishment during media interviews.
