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Supreme Court says no fault in death sentence decision

The Supreme Court yesterday said it could find no fault with the case of Hsu Tzu-chiang (徐自強), a death-row inmate whose conviction has been controversial for almost a decade.

Hsu was indicted for the Sept. 1, 1995, kidnapping and murder of Huang Chun-shu (黃春樹), a salesman, based on the testimony of his two alleged accomplices, Huang Chun-chi (黃春棋) and Chen Yi-lung (陳憶龍). Hsu turned himself in when he realized that he was being sought, but he has never confessed to either crime.

The Supreme Court had been requested by the Council of Grand Justices to review Hsu's conviction as the result of a motion filed by Hsu's defense counsel last December to have the conviction overturned as unconstitutional.

The major argument for Hsu's defense concerns whether co-suspects' testimony should be used as evidence.

Chen Yi-lung wrote a confession admitting that he had deliberately incriminated Hsu because he had a grudge against him and hoped to delay the trial. However, the High Court decided not to take this evidence into consideration when it heard the case, and upheld the death penalty passed on Hsu by the lower court.

In refusing to hear Chen's evidence, the High Court breached Hsu's human rights, his defense team claims.

Without Chen's accusation there is not evidence with which to convict Chen, his defense team says.

But despite Chen's testimony, the Supreme Court said that there was no other evidence to prove Hsu's innocence. As a result, judges cannot suspend his death penalty simply because Chen decided to retract his testimony.

"The High Court judges had good reason to pass the death sentence on Hsu. The Supreme Court did not find anything improper within the High Court's verdict," the official response of the Supreme Court read.

The response will be used for reference while the grand justices work on the constitutional interpretation question.

In addition to the application for a constitutional interpretation, Hsu's defense team also filed another request to the Taiwan High Court for an extraordinary retrial but this request had yet to be answered as of press time yesterday.

Hsu's conviction was handed down by the Supreme Court on April 27, 2000.

His defense counsels petitioned State Public Prosecutor General Lu Jen-fa (盧仁發) to pursue an extraordinary appeal for Hsu four times.

Lu finally approved the fifth petition to make the first extraordinary appeal in 2001, but that appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court on March 21, 2002.

After that, Lu filed another three appeals to the Supreme Court, and on May 6 this year, his fourth extraordinary appeal was rejected again.

Defense petitions cited a Control Yuan investigation report released in January, 2001, that concluded Hsu's conviction was flawed and unlawful.

In the report, the Control Yuan also suggested Lu make extraordinary appeals for Hsu.
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