Family members and human rights activists called yesterday for a stay of execution for Hsu Tzu-chiang (
Members of the Judicial Reform Foundation (民間司法改革基金會) and 31-year-old Hsu's family, held a press conference yesterday arguing that Hsu's conviction for involvement in a kidnapping and murder case was based on what they called "flimsy evidence" and the confessions of two defendants.
A human rights group and Hsu's family called on the Ministry of Justice to halt the execution. Hsu's lawyer petitioned for a new trial and a second extraordinary appeal for his client.
Advocates for Hsu said the defendant had sustainable alibis that the courts had overlooked.
A Supreme Court judgment against Hsu was finalized on April 27. Just days ago another extraordinary appeal was dismissed.
With time for an acquittal running out, Hsu's family pleaded with the two other defendants for help proving Hsu's innocence.
Their efforts finally bore fruit this week when Chen Yi-lung (陳憶隆), produced a written confession admitting that he had deliberately incriminated Hsu and claimed Hsu was innocent. Chen said he had accused Hsu because he had a grudge against him and had hoped to delay the proceeding of the trials.
"When a man is near death he speaks from his heart," Chen's confession read, "I now have nothing to beg for but that the innocent not be wrongly sentenced and executed."
The confession was made after the Supreme Court's verdict came out late last month.
Hsu's lawyer plans to present the evidence in court next week.
The kidnapping, in which Huang Chun-shu (
The vehicles used to pick up the ransom were rented in Hsu's name, though he was not at the scene. Huang and Chen confessed that Hsu had been a part of the crime. Hsu turned himself in to the police when a warrant was issued for his arrest. "Hsu has never pleaded guilty, but the courts continue to rely on confessions from the other two suspects, which have not been corroborated by any concrete evidence," Joseph Lin (
"That's the point. It is typical of Taiwan's criminal justice system that the confession of the defendants is weighed too heavily. On its own, such evidence is often unreliable." Lin said.
The case has been remanded by the Supreme Court to the High Court for re-trial five times because of insufficient evidence.
"But the justification for a re-trial was repeatedly ignored by the High Court until finally the Supreme Court itself also regarded the repeated wrong as the right!" Hsu's brother-in-law complained.
An employee at Hsu's mother's beauty salon said she saw Hsu at the salon on the afternoon the crime occurred but she was never summoned to the court to offer testimony although she had repeatedly expressed her willingness to do so.
The court did not summon the employee because it thought her testimony would be irrelevant to the case because the crime occurred in the morning.
But Hsu's defense counsel Chen Chien-hung (
"The other two defendants' testimony said that Hsu was also with them in the afternoon. How could it be irrelevant?" He questioned.
Another alibi was that Hsu was snapped by an ATM camera when he withdrew cash from a post office cash machine about the time the crime occurred. However, when the evidence video was produced before the court, the other two defendants changed their testimony that Hsu was with them, and said instead that Hsu had gone out to wipe off fingerprints left on the victim's car.
The outgoing Minister of Justice Yeh Chin-feng (
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