Death penalty makes a return to the public eye

Premier Yu Shyi-kun, adding fuel to a ten-year controversy, announced that the government intends to put an end to the death penalty at the Cabinet's Development and Eval-uation Commission meeting last Monday.

The Cabinet also issued its first National Human Rights Policy White Paper (國家人權政策白皮書) at the meeting. According to the paper, the government will gradually reduce offences that require the death penalty until they are replaced by a life sentence or long-term imprisonment.

The commission also said that it conducted a telephone survey on Oct. 1 and Oct. 2 on the death penalty. The 1,109 interviewees were above the age of 20. The survey showed that 77 percent of the respondents did not support ending the death penalty while 47 percent said that the death penalty should be replaced by a life sentence without amnesty.

According to the Ministry of Justice, the ministry is planning to abolish death penalty offences and replace them with long-term imprisonment or life sentences before May of 2004.

The legislature abolished the Act for the Control and Punishment of Banditry (懲治盜匪條例), or the "Bandit Law," in January this year.

In addition, an amendment to Article 51 of the Criminal Code (刑法) is pending for the legislature's approval.

Under Bandit Law -- a harsh criminal code that was implemented in 1944 in China during wartime -- a mandatory death sentence was imposed on anyone who kidnapped another person for ransom and then intentionally killed the victim.

Under the law, ten crimes carry a mandatory death sentence.

Article of the Criminal Code stipulates that the maximum sentence for several offenses cannot exceed 20 years. The amendment -- which was approved by the Cabinet this July -- raised the maximum punishment for several offenses to a 40-year jail term.

Judicial Reform Foundation (民間司法改革基金會) Executive-General Shirley Lin (林靜萍) said that the foundation advocates abolishing the death penalty.

But she saids she also thinks that the government has a long way to go before it can abolish capital punishment.

She said that the ministry's policy to abolish the death penalty by prolonging imprisonment is a step in the right direction.

However, she said that the ministry's ineffective prison management is a big concern for the foundation.

"Regarding human rights, the abolishment of the death penalty needs to be carried out anyhow," Lin said. "First of all, the number of inmates will definitely increase. Do we have enough prisons? How will the ministry convince the public that its new policy will work after the recent prison breaks? I think the ministry has to address these two questions first."

The Ministry of Justice's Department of Corrections (矯正司) Director Huang Cheng-nan (黃徵男) told the Taipei Times that the ministry doesn't have any plans to build more prisons even if the number of prisoners increases. But officials are working on a prison management system and hope to come up with a solution which will ensure tighter prison security.

The prosecutor-general of the Shihlin District Prosecutors' office, Wu Chen-huan (吳陳鐶), said that abolishing the death penalty is a policy and it has nothing to do with morality.

He said that whether capital punishment is abolished will depend on public opinion.

"It's not a question of whether an individual agrees with the policy or not. Once the policy is implemented, everybody, especially law enforcement officers, will work hard on it," Wu said. "I think that it will be a step-by-step process. For example, if we don't have enough prisons, then we will have to build more.

KMT Apollo Chen (陳學聖) strongly disagrees with the idea of abolishing the death penalty.

"It is not a good thing to do at this moment. It's not fair for the victim's family when there is no death penalty," Chen said. "I still believe that a criminal should pay for what he does."

Chen that he would agree to abolish the death penalty only under one circumstance.

"If there is a `real' life sentence, I will vote `yes' to the amendment," Chen said. "A `real' life sentence means a life sentence without a chance of amnesty.

According to Chen, if the life sentence without amnesty replaces the death penalty, there could be another controversy.

"Would it be fair to ask innocent people to pay taxes to support the criminals while they are in jail? That will become another big problem for us," he said.

Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊), a lawyer and PFP candidate for the Taipei City Council, supports the ministry's idea of prolonging imprisonment of a definite period but rejected the idea of entirely abolishing the death penalty.

She said that "a useful warning" is a lot more important than the "actual punishment."

"Abolishing capital punishment has been a controversial issue for the past ten years," she said.

"Personally, I still believe it is necessary to keep death penalty as a punishment for the criminals who deserve it.

"But I think that authorities should be more careful and critical when they are reviewing or approving a death penalty case because it is a weighty decision when the state considers taking someone's life,"Huang said.