Memories fading in Hsichih case

While the opening of a retrial has breathed life to the nine-year-old Hsichih Trio case, the proceedings have encountered frequent difficulties in getting witnesses to recall past events.

Since the retrial began in September, over a dozen witnesses have been summoned to testify on the double murder case in 1991, in which a couple was brutally murdered at their home in Hsichih, Taipei County.

At a hearing yesterday, the Taiwan High Court heard testimony from a forensic medical expert, two clerks, and a reporter. However, their testimonies added little to the fact-finding process as their memories about the case have faded over the years.

Liu Hsiang-chin (劉象縉), who had examined the couple's bodies following the murder on March 24, 1991, testified in 1992 and 1993 that he was not able to determine how many weapons had been used in the murder.

However, when testifying at the hearing yesterday, the assessor told the court that numerous wounds were inflicted by more than one weapon after examining the photos of the wounds.

One of the most contentious points of the case is whether the murder was committed solely by Wang Wen-hsiao (王文孝) -- who has already been executed -- or whether the trio helped Wang. Liu's accounts are viewed as crucial to determining whether the murder could possibly have been committed by a single person.

When the defense counsel questioned his contrasting accounts yesterday, the 73-year-old admitted his memory may have deteriorated over the years and said, "I don't even remember what happened yesterday."

Moreover, a central contention in the case is the defense's claims of police torture. The defendants -- Su Chien-ho (蘇建和), Liu Bing-lang (劉秉郎) and Chuang Lin-hsun (莊林勳) -- have insisted that their confessions were extracted under police torture.

Su told the court yesterday he once tried to retract his confessions by telling a Shihlin District Court judge about police torture which he said occurred during an interview at a detention house. However, he said the judge ignored his claims and even prevented her clerk from recording his accounts of the torture, which has made it impossible for the trio to plead innocent to this day.

Chung Hsiu-yuan (鍾秀媛), a clerk at the Shihlin District Court, who joined the judge at the interview, was asked to recollect her memories on the episode at the hearing yesterday.

"I don't remember," she said, in her answers to most questions yesterday.

At one point, Su tried to invoke the clerk's memories with detailed descriptions of the interview.

"You were recording the interview and the judge told you to delete what I said about the torture, isn't that right?" he asked, asking the clerk to think carefully as he said it was a matter of life and death for himself and the other two defendants. However, the clerk, looking at Su, uttered her usual answer: "I don't remember."