“Police beat people. Everyone knows that to be true,” Su Pin-kun (蘇炳坤) said.
Su described a particularly dark period in Taiwanese history when martial law was still in place. It was a time characterized by fear, a time when people could “disappear” for being suspected of being a Chinese spy.
Police torture was a common practice then, “often the fastest way to solve a case,” defense attorney Greg Yo (尤伯祥) said in his closing argument.
Police torture continued to be the central theme of Su’s final hearing of his retrial on July 16, the day when the prosecution and the defense made their closing arguments.
Su was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1987 after being wrongfully convicted of robbery and attempted murder. Su lived in exile under the protection of a district attorney for years after the judges reversed the verdict of the first trial and found him guilty. He was arrested while visiting Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in 1997.
In 2000, then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) granted a special executive pardon to Su, who was serving the second year of his sentence. Yet the pardon did little to clear Su’s name or compensate him for his years of suffering.
Insistent on receiving an official recognition of his innocence from the criminal justice system, Su last year filed a motion for retrial with the help of the Taiwan Innocence Project.
The motion was eventually granted by the Taiwan High Court and affirmed by the Supreme Court the following year after the government’s appeal was dismissed.
The prosecution and the defense argued for a not guilty verdict in their closing arguments on July 16. While both discussed the lack of sufficient evidence to prove Su guilty of attempted murder and robbery, the defense emphasized the police use of torture during interrogation.
Yo passionately presented his argument for the not guilty verdict by proclaiming “police torture is the key to this case.”
He went on, asserting that “the verdict of the first trial years ago was correct, in that it rightly maintained Su’s innocence. However, the judges in the first trial overlooked the issue of police torture.”
He paused dramatically for a second.
“Society is different now. Only when the court begins to address police torture, can there be any transitional justice,” he said.
Su stood up when the presiding judge asked him if there was anything he would like to say.
“Thank you Mr prosecutor for recommending the not guilty verdict,” he said, bowing to the prosecutor, Chang Chieh-chin (張介欽).
Su turned toward the three judges sitting high above on the bench and began to recount his experience of being tortured by police.
“The police came knocking on my door at 5am. When I went down to open the door, police swore at me and yelled: ‘Stop pretending.’”
Without any clue of what had happened, Su was taken to the Qingchao Lake Police Station in Hsinchu City, where he was tortured using several methods overnight.
“They tied me up in mid-air on a bar between two desks and poured water down my nose with a kettle while keeping my mouth shut,” Su said.
At one point, Central Police University president Tiao Chien-sheng (刁建生), who was deputy chief of the precinct at the time, allegedly came into the interrogation room and threatened Su.
“If you do not confess, I am going to shoot you in the head,” Su quoted Tiao as saying.
A righteous man, Su did not want to give in. He was taken outside the interrogation room where a police officer tortured him using another method: ringing an air siren next to his ear.
That day, he went through unimaginable physical pain and emotional turmoil. Police kept torturing Su until he finally caved in.
It was not until he was dragged outside the police station in the evening along with codefendant Kuo Chung-hsiung (郭中雄) for a news conference that he learned what crimes he was charged with.
Looking at the three judges, Su asked: “Is that justice?”
One only needs to look at other wrongful convictions that have been overturned in Taiwan to recognize the unmistakable role of police torture. The cases of Cheng Hsing-tse (鄭性澤) in 2002, Hsu Tzu-chiang (徐自強) in 1995 and the Hsichih Trio in 1991 had an unequivocal connection with police torture.
Although it would be overreaching to claim police torture to be the sole cause of wrongful convictions, there is no doubt about its detrimental impact. Cheng, Hsu, and two of the Hsichih Trio gave false confessions after not being able to endure hours of police torture.
Repeatedly throughout the hearing, Su turned toward his family sitting in the courtroom. Su’s wife, son, two daughters and granddaughter were in the courtroom on July 16.
“My son had just graduated from elementary school when I first got into this mess. My second daughter was just four. Look how old they are now. They are sitting right over there,” Su said, pointing at them, while the judges followed his finger and gazed at Su’s family.
“I am turning 70 next year. All I want is to leave this world with my name cleared, just as I arrived in this world immaculate... If I were guilty, I would be embarrassed to death standing here. I would not be standing here today, or be able to face the Buddha and my family,” he added.
Sitting on a bench outside the courtroom before the hearing started, Su told me: “I don’t care whether I receive any monetary compensation or not... I want my name untainted.”
In order for the court, and in turn the nation, to begin addressing the issue of police torture head on, the judges have to return the not guilty verdict.
“Only when police torture is addressed will there be any justice,” Yo proclaimed repeatedly when delivering his closing argument.
After martial law was lifted in 1987, Taiwan has gradually become a beacon of democracy in Asia.
The fact remains that the Martial Law era is a dark chapter in Taiwanese history. Understandably, the road to transitional justice is an onerous one, and the nation has yet to confront and resolve many ramifications of this dark era.
With the court to announce Su’s verdict tomorrow, it is fitting for the nation to begin addressing the issue of police torture.
Su is innocent: The judges should return a not-guilty verdict.
Stephen Hsu is a senior at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he studies sociology and economics. He is also an intern at the Taiwan Innocence Project.
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