A man who spent nearly nine years in prison after being convicted of killing a taxi driver was released on Friday, after the Kaohsiung branch of the Taiwan High Court ordered a retrial, ruling that new evidence called his conviction into question.
In May 2007, a taxi driver was shot with a handgun at close range in Kaohsiung’s Fengshan District (鳳山). A street surveillance camera captured a blurred image of a man with long hair and two witnesses who might have seen the suspect’s face.
Police asked a sketch artist to draw a portrait of the suspect and five months later a female masseuse in the area said Lin Chin-kuei (林金貴), 48, resembled the picture, and he was taken in for questioning.
Photo: CNA
In 2015, Lin’s elder sister found a photograph taken in March 2007 of Lin with short hair.
Expert witnesses said it was impossible for Lin’s hair to grow enough to resemble the man in the sketch in only two months.
The defense also noted that Lin had passed a polygraph test during the investigation.
Photo: Copy by Huang Liang-chieh, Taipei Times
After walking out of Tainan Prison, where he served 3,116 days of a life sentence, Lin spoke about his ordeal at a news conference organized by the Taiwan Association for Innocence, a judicial reform organization that fights against wrongful convictions.
“I was found guilty because the investigation was conducted in an unscientific manner and the judges made their ruling based on their own personal opinions. Because of that, I wasted nearly nine year’s in jail,” Lin said.
“The day before, when they told me that the guards wanted to speak to me, I assumed they wanted to question me about something. When I learned I was being discharged, I looked up and thought I would no longer see the ceiling of my jail cell. Then my mind went blank; it felt like I was in a daydream,” he said.
Photo: Copy by Huang Liang-chieh, Taipei Times
Lin’s lawyer Tsai Ching-yu (蔡晴雨), along with Lin’s elder sister Lin Yu-fang (林玉芳) and Taiwan Association for Innocence director Law Bing-cheng (羅秉成), have campaigned for years to emphasize inconsistencies in his trial.
“Some years ago when I began working on the case, I found numerous flaws in it. However, the judges deemed evidence that favored Lin unimportant,” Tsai said. “While working on Lin’s defense, I also found many dark sides to a number of possibly wrong convictions. All letters written by inmates are checked ... so inmates worried about receiving unfair treatment and most of them gave up fighting their cases.”
“We have been doing our best to save my brother’s life. The investigation and the trial in which he received a life sentence were done in a sloppy way and were full of errors. I want to ask the judges, did you gather and review all the evidence? They did not have solid evidence, yet they found him guilty and put him in jail for life. It has caused pain and misery for all my family,” Lin’s sister said.
SILENCING CRITICS: In addition to blocking Taiwan, China aimed to prevent rights activists from speaking out against authoritarian states, a Cabinet department said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned transnational repression by Beijing after RightsCon, a major digital human rights conference scheduled to be held in Zambia this week, was abruptly canceled due to Chinese pressure over Taiwanese participation. This year’s RightsCon, the world’s largest conference discussing issues “at the intersection of human rights and technology,” was scheduled to take place from tomorrow to Friday in Lusaka, and expected to draw 2,600 in-person attendees from 150 countries, along with 1,100 online participants. However, organizers were forced to cancel the event due to behind-the-scenes pressure from China, the ministry said, expressing its “strongest condemnation”
Taiwan’s economy grew far faster than expected in the first quarter, as booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications drove a surge in exports, spilling over into investment and consumption, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. GDP growth was 13.69 percent year-on-year during the January-to-March period, beating the DGBAS’ February forecast by 2.23 percentage points and marking the most robust growth in nearly four decades, DGBAS senior official Chiang Hsin-yi (江心怡) told a news conference in Taipei. The result was powered by exports, which remain the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, Chiang said. Outbound shipments jumped 51.12 percent year-on-year to
DELAYED BUT DETERMINED: The president’s visit highlights Taiwan’s right to international engagement amid regional pressure from China President Willaim Lai (賴清德) yesterday arrived in Eswatini, more than a week after his planned visit to Taiwan’s sole African ally was suspended because of revoked overflight permits. “The visit, originally scheduled for April 22, was postponed due to unforeseen external factors,” Lai wrote on social media. “After several days of careful arrangements by our diplomatic and national security teams, we successfully arrived today.” Lai said he looked forward to further deepening Taiwan-Eswatini relations through closer cooperation in the economy, agriculture, culture and education, as well as advancing the nation’s international partnerships. The president was initially scheduled to arrive in time to celebrate
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) yesterday said the US faced a choice between an “impossible” military operation or a “bad deal” with Tehran, after US President Donald Trump disparaged Iran’s latest peace proposal. Negotiations between the two countries have been deadlocked since a ceasefire came into effect on April 8, with only one round of direct peace talks held so far. Iran’s Tasnim and Fars news agencies reported that Tehran had submitted a 14-point proposal to mediator Pakistan, but Trump was quick to cast doubt on it. “I will soon be reviewing the plan that Iran has just sent to us, but
RSS