The Taiwan High Court yesterday denied a Chinese-language newspaper story which reported that the military court had discovered the missing kitchen knife which was a crucial piece of evidence in the Hsichih Trio murder case and had sent the evidence to the High Court.
"I must say, I heard about it only a few minutes ago when you people came to my office with the newspaper," said Taiwan High Court Spokesman Tsai Kuo-tsai (蔡國在). "And I assure you that this is not true. Up to this minute, we have not received anything from the military court such as the story described."
Tsai said that the high court is currently reviewing the entire case and has not decided on a date to retry the case.
"As far as I am concerned, judges have not discovered any new evidence which may make the case go in a different direction. We are still working on it before we rehear the case," Tsai said.
In this murder case, the three suspects -- Su Chien-ho (蘇建和), Liu Bing-lang (劉秉郎) and Chuang Lin-hsun (莊林勳) -- had been imprisoned for more than 11 years -- eight of them on death row -- until the Taiwan High Court overturned their murder convictions and ruled on Jan. 13 this year that they should be released "immediately."
Tsai explained that the convictions were overturned and the trio released because the high court had ruled there was not sufficient evidence to prove them guilty.
The missing knife was crucial to that result.
The knife was "lost" by military prosecutors during legal hearings involving another suspect, Wang Wen-hsiao (王文孝), who was serving in the marines at the time of the murders and whose fingerprints were found on the knife.
Wang was executed on Jan. 11, 1992, under Military Law after confessing and pleading guilty to the murder.
On March 6 the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office, on behalf of the victims' families, filed an appeal to the Supreme Court.
The appeal was granted on Aug. 8, and the Supreme Court ruled that the Taiwan High Court should rehear the case.
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