Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘), President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) pick for state public prosecutor-general, said yesterday that while the 44 individuals on death row should be executed, he supports an amendment to abolish the death penalty.
Huang made the remarks at a legislative hearing to review his nomination.
Forty-four convicts remain on death row, but no executions have been carried out in more than five years since former minister of justice Morley Shih (施茂林) and incumbent Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) adopted a policy that maintains capital punishment, but has stayed executions.
Wang says that 132 countries have abolished or stopped practicing capital punishment, which shows that ending capital punishment is a global trend.
However, abolition is unpopular, with a majority of the public and officials saying that no decision should be made until public consensus is reached.
Huang told legislators yesterday that the 44 people on death row should be executed and that the sentences should not be delayed indefinitely.
Meanwhile, Huang vowed to investigate serious cases — regardless of their “political hue — if he assumed the post of top prosecutor.
Confronted by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators who said that prosecutors have focused their efforts on DPP politicians while avoiding or delaying investigations targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) politicians, Huang said he and the special investigation panel would accelerate investigations into the KMT’s three-in-one sale of the Broadcasting Corporation of China, China Television Co and the Central Motion Picture Corp to China Times Group subsidiary Jungli Investment Co in 2005 for NT$9.3 billion (US$286.7 million).
The party’s sale of the Institute of Policy Research and Development building to Yuan Lih Construction Corp for NT$4.3 billion in 2007 would also be a focus.
Both deals took place when President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was party chairman.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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