The Hsichih Trio murder case's defense counsel Su You-chen (蘇友辰) yesterday said that his clients will abandon their appeal if the Taiwan High Court uphold the death penalty sentence hanging over their heads at a retrial next Monday.
For the last time before their trial, Su visited co-accused Su Chien-ho (蘇建和), Liu Bing-lang (劉秉郎) and Chuang Lin-hsun (莊林勳) yesterday morning at the Taipei Detention House, where they have been detained for the past 12 years.
"They told me that they sincerely hoped that judges could clear their names by dropping the death penalty this time. If not, they will give up their fight and get ready to die," Su said.
The trial will be held at 11am on Monday at the Taiwan High Court.
The defendants were first sentenced to death in 1992 for killing a Hsichih couple, Wu Ming-han (吳銘漢) and Yeh Ying-lan (葉盈蘭).
However, the case and trial were controversial and the defendants have since become the concern of human rights groups because of the vague forensic report and weak evidence that were the cause of numerous arguments between defense counsels and the plaintiff's lawyers during the hearings.
They were also the reasons why former state public prosecutor-general Chen Han (陳涵) filed three extraordinary appeals to the Supreme Court on the trio's behalf.
In March of 1991, Wu and Yeh were brutally murdered in their apartment home in Hsichih, Taipei County.
The police arrested four suspects on Aug. 14, 1991, and prosecutors charged them with murder on Oct. 4 in the same year. One of the suspects, Wang Wen-hsiao (王文孝), was then serving in the military.
Death sentence
As a result, he was executed on Jan. 11, 1992, under military law after he admitted that he committed the murder.
The other three, Su, Liu and Chuang, were sentenced to death after the first trial at the Shihlin District Court on Feb. 18, 1992. Three years later, after appeals, the Supreme Court came up with the final verdict for the trio and the result remained the same -- the death penalty.
In addition to Chen's three requests for appeal that were all upheld, defense counsel Su You-chen also filed an appeal to the Supreme Court on Aug. 21, 1998.
On Sept. 23, 1999, the Supreme Court accepted the appeal and ordered the Taiwan High Court to hold rehearings and a retrial for the case. The first rehearing was held on Nov. 16, 2000.
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