The race to rescue the "Hsichih Trio" from death row suffered a major setback yesterday when the Public Prosecutors' Office of the Taiwan High Court made an interlocutory appeal against last Friday's High Court ruling approving a retrial of the case.
The prosecution argued that what the High Court regards as new evidence, and on which the retrial ruling was based, is actually not new and is irrelevant to the conviction of the three.
Supporters of the Hsichih Trio, who were overjoyed by the long-awaited retrial ruling just a few days ago, were outraged by the prosecution's interlocutory appeal.
"To them [the prosecution] it might only be a matter of law, but to us it is a matter of life and death," said Sue Wang (王時思), executive-general of the Judicial Reform Foundation (民間司法改革基金會).
Activists for Su Jian-he (
The Hsichih Trio were charged with the 1991 murder of a couple in Hsichih (汐止), Taipei County, and sentenced to death. The charge, however, was largely based on confessions that the three made and that of Wang Wen-hsiao (王文孝), who was serving in the army at the time of the murder and was convicted of the murders and executed in 1992.
Human rights activists say that the trio's confessions were extracted under torture.
The key point of the High Court's retrial ruling was an issue relating to a small purse.
In the trio's original trial, a small purse stolen from the victims' home and seized at Wang's residence was used as evidence in the case. However, two police reports had indicated that the purse was stolen by Wang a month before the murder.
The trio's defense counsel, Su Yue-chen (蘇友辰), presented the police reports as new evidence to request a retrial. That request was approved by the High Court last Friday. The decision, however, said that the High Court prosecution was correct when it disagreed that the two reports were new evidence.
"Although the judicial police reports are basic information for the prosecutor's investigation, their content is not itself criminal evidence derived from investigation, and is actually often incomplete or mistaken," the written interlocutory appeal read.
The written appeal also says that the two reports were already attached to prosecution documents and therefore were hardly likely to have been ignored during the trial.
Even if the purse was stolen by Wang before the murder, such a fact does not affect whether the trio were involved in the murder, the prosecution said.
Those who maintain that the three were wrongly convicted say the appeal is unacceptable.
"The High Court had just paved the way for justice, but the prosecution then put up a new barrier," said Su Yue-chen with disappointment.
"A retrial is needed because it would address the issue of the men being wrongly charged as well as showing that if the charge had been correct, it would remove the doubt that the public has that the trial was unjust. This shows that the prosecution is not confident with the case.
"It also shows the internal disorder in the prosecution system. The State Public Prosecutor General has repeatedly called for an extraordinary appeal for the three, but now the High Court prosecutor goes in the opposite direction," Su said.
"In August 1998 we petitioned for an interlocutory appeal and it was not until September 1999 that it was approved by the Supreme Court," said Lin Feng-chung (
"These three young men have been in jail for nine years. How many more years do they have to wait for justice to finally be served?" Lin asked.
Human rights activists called on the Supreme Court to dismiss the interlocutory appeal and at the same time expressed their hope that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) would grant the men a pardon.
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