This is an editorial that could write itself, as it covers a subject that has been repeatedly raised in this column and others on this page: The time has come for Taiwan to abolish the death penalty.
However, it is worth repeating, as on Thursday, one of Taiwan’s more egregious miscarriages of justice was finally brought to an end, more than 15 years after it began.
Cheng Hsing-tse (鄭性澤), who spent 14 years behind bars, including the last 10 on death row, is finally — in the eyes of the nation’s legal system — a free man.
Cheng was sentenced to death in 2002 after being found guilty of shooting police officer Su Hsien-pi (蘇憲丕) during a gunbattle in a Taichung KTV parlor earlier that year.
Cheng had been one of a group of six people partying with an ex-con, Luo Wu-hsiung (羅武雄), when Luo fired shots from one of his two guns into the ceiling of the room.
Su was one of three police officers sent to the KTV parlor, and he was shot as he rushed into the room. The other officers fired 16 shots into the room, and more shots were reportedly fired from within the room. Su and Luo died of gunshot wounds.
Police and prosecutors said Cheng had two guns and that he had fired the shot that killed Su.
However, judges at the Taichung branch of the Taiwan High Court on Thursday found Cheng not guilty, saying that evidence of the firing positions could not rule out that Luo had shot Su and that Cheng’s confession had been coerced.
Cheng’s case repeatedly made history in Taiwan as it wound through the legal system: seven trials and seven retrials, including the Supreme Court upholding his death sentence in 2006 — at which point he was moved to death row — the involvement of the Control Yuan, and then prosecutors applying in March last year for a new retrial and Cheng’s release on bail the following May.
While Cheng might not be of unblemished character, he should not have spent 14 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit, and it should not have taken three years from the time that the Control Yuan recommended that the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office apply for a retrial — because of the errors its investigation had found — for a not guilty verdict to be handed down.
According to the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty, there are 43 people on death row in Taiwan. The last execution was in May last year, of Cheng Chieh (鄭捷), convicted of killing four people in a stabbing spree on the Taiwan Mass Rapid Transit System in 2014.
Every time there is a shocking murder, such as the MRT stabbings, the media and social networks are filled with demands for a speedy trial and execution, while the Ministry of Justice has consistently responded over the years to calls to abolish the death penalty by saying that strong public sentiment in favor of capital punishment precludes changing the law, though it is working toward that goal.
However, Cheng is the fifth death row inmate to be released from prison for a retrial, a clear sign that there are flaws in the system that sent these people to prison in the first place.
As Control Yuan members Wang Mei-yu (王美玉) and Chang Kuei-mei (仉桂美) said in March last year: “The justice system must uphold its obligation of conducting a fair, equitable and open process to examine if there were flaws and defects and to see if the judicial procedures had been followed properly.”
As long as flaws in the judicial system continue to come to light, and given Taiwan’s record of innocent people being condemned and executed, the government should not be in the business of executing prisoners.
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