Taiwan’s longest running criminal case, marred by evidence of grievous violations by police and an apparent lack of forensic evidence, was headed again for the Supreme Court after the Taiwan High Court in Taipei yesterday convicted three defendants in a kidnapping and murder case for the 11th time.
Chiou Ho-shun (邱和順) was sentenced to death for the 11th time, while Wu Shu-chen (吳淑貞) and Lin Kun-ming (林坤明) were sentenced to 11 and 17 years respectively in the latest retrial of the 22-year-old case.
After hearing the sentence in detention yesterday, a distraught Chiou shouted: “I didn’t do it. You didn’t investigate and sentenced me to death instead.”
The Supreme Court has rejected the High Court’s ruling every time in a case that lawyers say is riddled with problems, including the submission as evidence of recorded confessions, despite evidence that the defendants were tortured by police. In 1994, the Control Yuan impeached two prosecutors and 10 police officers involved in the case for using violence and threats when interrogating the suspects.
In addition, the body of the victim, Lu Cheng (陸正), was never found and the defense counsel says there is no forensic evidence against the defendants.
On Dec. 21, 1987, the 10-year-old Lu went missing after school in Hsinchu City. A kidnapper telephoned his home and demanded a ransom of NT$5 million (US$148,000). The family paid NT$1 million in ransom nine days later, but Lu was never released.
In September of the following year the police received a tip-off and arrested three juveniles, who confessed to the crime and to murdering an insurance agent, Ko Hung Yu-lan (柯洪玉蘭), in a separate case. They implicated Chiou Ho-shun (邱和順), who was in detention for another case at the time, as the head of the criminal ring.
In total, 12 suspects were charged. All but one confessed.
As more details surfaced, however, discrepancies emerged in the defendants’ accounts of the crime.
This included contradictions on where the kidnappers had disposed of the body.
Twenty-two years after the murder, Chiou, Lin and Wu are the only defendants still at court.
One defendant in the case, also sentenced to death, died of illness in prison, while the others, who received prison sentences, eventually dropped their right to appeal after losing hope of being acquitted.
Speaking at the High Court yesterday, Chiou’s lawyer Lee Sheng-hsiung (李勝雄) said justice had not been served.
“The defendant was threatened and tortured [during interrogation] and the entire case is riddled with holes,” he said.
Lu’s father Lu Chin-te (陸晉德), however, said he hoped the Supreme Court would finally approve the High Court’s sentence.
Lu said he believed the defendants were guilty and that he hoped the courts would put an end to the ordeal because he was “very tired, physically and emotionally.”
The Judicial Reform Foundation yesterday said that the court system had failed to give the defendants a speedy trial and that the courts had violated Article 156 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) by accepting the defendant’s confessions as evidence.
Article 156 stipulates that confessions may be submitted as evidence if they are “not extracted by violence, threat, inducement, fraud, exhausting interrogation, unlawful detention or other improper means.”
Judicial Reform Foundation executive director Lin Feng-jeng (林峰正) said: “This case has dragged on for 22 years. The lack of efficiency is unacceptable.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN
‘UNFRIENDLY’: Changing the nationality listing of Taiwanese residents to ‘China’ goes against EU foreign policy as well as democratic and human rights principles, MOFA said Taiwan yesterday called on Denmark to correct its designation of the nationality of Taiwanese residents as “China” or face retaliatory measures. The Danish government in 2024 changed the nationality of Taiwanese citizens on their residence permits from “Taiwan” to “China.” The decision goes against EU foreign policy and contravenes democratic and human rights principles, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said. Denmark should present a solution acceptable to Taiwan as soon as possible and correct the erroneous designation to preserve the longstanding friendship between the two nations, Hsiao said. The issue could damage Denmark’s image and business reputation in Taiwan,
Taiwan climbed to its highest position in global export rankings in more than three decades last year, buoyed by demand linked to artificial intelligence (AI) that lifted shipments of semiconductors and technology products, Ministry of Finance data released yesterday showed. Taiwan accounted for 2.4 percent of global exports last year, or about US$640 billion, ranking 12th worldwide, the data showed. That was up four places from a year earlier and marked the nation’s best ranking since 1994, the ministry said. Taiwan’s share of global exports rose by 0.5 percentage points from the previous year, the largest increase among major economies, reflecting the nation’s
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
RSS