Fourteen years after Chiang Kuo-ching (江國慶) was executed for a crime he did not commit, the Control Yuan has censured the military for its handling of the case, the president has personally apologized to Chiang’s family and two new probes have been launched, one by prosecutors and one by the military.
While prosecutors work on their case against Hsu Jung-chou (許榮洲), who has confessed — for a second time — to the 1996 rape and murder of the five-year-old girl that Chiang was wrongly executed for, there has been a rush to criticize those involved in the prosecution of Chiang and yet an equally quick effort to absolve the government and those who bayed for Chiang’s blood of responsibility.
Questions about Chiang’s arrest, prosecution and execution are nothing new, including questions about his “confession” and allegations of torture. Chiang’s father first appealed to the Control Yuan to look into the case on Sept. 15, 1996, three days after his son was accused of killing the girl.
What has largely been left out of recent reporting about Chiang’s case is discussion about the media frenzy and public hysteria aroused by the murder of a young girl on an air force base and the subsequent pressure on the military and the government to find a suspect. There has also been little discussion of the fact that confessions extracted under torture have played a prominent role in several high-profile death penalty cases in civilian courts — some of which have dragged on for as long or longer than Chiang’s.
The 1987 kidnap-murder of nine-year-old Lu Cheng (陸正) was also “solved” on the basis of confessions extracted under torture — torture that was recorded on audio tapes of the interrogations and led to the conviction of several police officers for torture and perjury. However, all 12 defendants were convicted solely on the basis of those confessions, despite the lack of any forensic evidence against them, including Chiou Ho-shun (邱和順), who was sentenced to death. Years later, another man confessed to killing Lu, but his confession has been ignored and Chiou and two co-defendants are still behind bars as their case bounces back and forth between the High Court and Supreme Court.
Then there is the Hsichih Trio — Liu Bing-lang (劉秉郎), Su Chien-ho (蘇建和) and Chuang Lin-hsun (莊林勳) — who retracted confessions they said were the result of torture. No forensic evidence tied them to the bloody 1991 murder of a couple, besides the ludicrous claim that NT$24 found in a closet had been stolen from the victims’ apartment. This is another case that has clogged the courts for far too long.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has said a serious violation of human rights in the military, such as Chiang’s, can never be allowed to happen again. However, he has failed to comment on other prominent cases of tortured confessions and serious abuses of human rights.
The Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) says confessions cannot serve as the sole basis of evidence of guilt and prohibits courts from using evidence extracted by means of torture, and yet these cases drag on with no one willing to admit that there have been major miscarriages of justice.
It is time that the government — and the public — take a long, hard look at the inadequacies of the legal system, especially in terms of the rights of defendants, and move to reform the system that has been too quick to condemn and too unwilling to admit mistakes. For example, one reason the Hsichih Trio’s case continues to clog the courts is that the defense doesn’t have the right to call its own forensic experts.
Murder victims and their families can never get back the lives that were lost. Neither can those that have been wrongly convicted of crimes. In the end, we all lose when the judicial system fails.
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
Taiwan-India relations appear to have been put on the back burner this year, including on Taiwan’s side. Geopolitical pressures have compelled both countries to recalibrate their priorities, even as their core security challenges remain unchanged. However, what is striking is the visible decline in the attention India once received from Taiwan. The absence of the annual Diwali celebrations for the Indian community and the lack of a commemoration marking the 30-year anniversary of the representative offices, the India Taipei Association and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center, speak volumes and raise serious questions about whether Taiwan still has a coherent India
RSS