Minister of Justice Luo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪) is to be subpoenaed to the Control Yuan for questioning over the execution of a death-row inmate as Control Yuan member Lee Ful-dien (李復甸) said that the execution may have been carried out in violation of due process.
Lee said yesterday that he would establish a case about the execution of Liu Yen-kuo (劉炎國) to investigate possible irregularities involved in steps that ended up depriving him of the right to have his case go to the Supreme Court for a retrial.
Luo and Acting State Prosecutor-General Lin Jie-der (林偕得), chief prosecutor of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, will have to come under investigation over the case, Lee said.
Photo: Chien Lee-chung, Taipei Times
“There could be irregularities surrounding the execution because the appellate process appears to have not been completed before Liu was put to death,” Lee said.
Liu was among five death-row inmates executed on Tuesday, the fifth series of executions since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office in May 2008, which brought the number of prisoners executed to 26 after Taiwan had observed a de facto moratorium on executions between late 2005 and April 2010.
Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智), Liu’s lawyer, has said that Liu could have been wrongfully convicted of the murder of a woman in a casino robbery he and Wu Lee-jen (吳李仁) committed in 1997 in Greater Taichung, although Liu admitted that he shot dead a man in the same case.
The latest request for an extraordinary appeal for Liu’s retrial was filed at 4pm on Tuesday after Chiu visited Liu at about noon that day to discuss details of the request, Chiu said.
Chiu said that they pinned hope on incoming state prosecutor-general Yen Da-ho (顏大和), whose appointment was recently confirmed by the legislature to lead the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, that Yen might be willing to consider Liu’s request and that is why he went to visit Liu right after the confirmation.
Saying that he was surprised to learn at about 6:30pm on Tuesday that Liu had been executed, Chiu cast doubt on the legitimacy of the execution and questioned why he was put to death before the Ministry of Justice received the document from the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office informing the ministry of its ruling on Liu’s request.
Chiu said that he received a copy of the rebuttal statement from the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office on Wednesday morning and the letter was postmarked 7pm on Tuesday.
The Ministry of Justice had rejected Chiu’s claim and said that the ministry received the rebuttal statement from the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office at 5pm on Tuesday.
According to Chiu, the appellate process was only considered to be completed when the original rebuttal statement was delivered to Liu.
“It was a seven-page rebuttal statement. How could the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office review the request, put out the rebuttal statement and deliver it to Taichung Prison within one hour?” Chiu said.
Meanwhile, the Taiwan Association for Innocence said that carrying out the execution before Yen’s inauguration on Thursday not only deprived the prisoners of their right to appeal for a retrial of their case under the new leadership of Yen, but also infringed Yen’s right to reconsider the cases.
The subsidiary of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) in Kumamoto, Japan, turned a profit in the first quarter of this year, marking the first time the first fab of the unit has become profitable since mass production started at the end of 2024. According to the contract chipmaker’s financial statement released on Friday, Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Inc (JASM), a joint venture running the fab in Kumamoto, posted NT$951 million (US$30.19 million) in profit in the January-to-March period, compared with a loss of NT$1.39 billion in the previous quarter, and a loss of NT$3.25 billion in the first quarter of
DRONE CENTRAL: Taiwan aims to become Asia’s democratic hub for drones, with most exports focused on high-quality military-grade models, an official said Taiwan’s drone industry is expected to expand significantly by 2030, producing 100,000 units per month and exporting half of them, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Current drone production capacity is about 15,000 units per month, but the industry can quickly scale up as demand increases, Industrial Development Administration Director-General Chiou Chyou-huey (邱求慧) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s drone output grew 2.5-fold last year to NT$12.9 billion (US$408.3 million) under a government program to develop the uncrewed vehicle sector, he said. The Executive Yuan in October last year approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion into domestic production of uncrewed aerial
RESOLUTE BACKING: Two Republican senators are planning to introduce legislation that would impose immediate sanctions on China if it attempts to invade Taiwan US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday reaffirmed US congressional support for Taiwan, saying the US and “all freedom-loving people” have a stake in preventing China from seizing Taiwan by force. Johnson made the remarks in an interview with Fox News Sunday on US President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) last week. In an interview that aired on Friday on Fox News, just as Trump wrapped up a high-stakes visit to China, he said he has yet to green-light a new US$14 billion arms package to Taiwan and that it “depends on China.” “It’s a very good
US President Donald Trump yesterday said he would speak to President William Lai (賴清德) as his administration considers whether to move ahead with a US$14 billion weapons sale to Taiwan — a potential arms deal that has drawn criticism from China. “Well, I’ll speak to him. I speak to everybody,” Trump told reporters yesterday when asked if he had any plans to call his counterpart, although he did not offer a time frame for when such a conversation could take place. Trump previously said he would speak to the person “that’s running Taiwan,” without specifying who he meant. “We have that situation very
RSS