Lawmakers yesterday proposed that a cap on the level of compensation given to the families of people who have been wrongfully executed should be removed.
Legislators from the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee preliminarily passed a draft amendment to the law governing compensation for miscarriages of justice, stipulating that the cash compensation provided to the families of people who have been wrongfully executed should be unlimited.
Lawmakers from across party lines also proposed that calculating the compensation should be raised to NT$5,000 per day from between NT$1,000 and NT$3,000 per day for the total life expectancy of the executed person.
The legislators proposed the amendment after the reopening of an investigation late last year into the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl in 1996 that led to the wrongful execution of an air force private.
Taipei prosecutors decided last year that Chiang Kuo-ching’s (江國慶) conviction in 1996 was the result of a coerced confession, following which he was executed at the age of 21.
The Military Supreme Court Prosecutors’ Office filed an extraordinary appeal with the Supreme Court in May last year to reopen the case in the wake of Control Yuan findings that Chiang was tortured into confessing by military investigators who were under pressure to solve the case.
The torture included aiming strong lights at Chiang during marathon interrogation sessions and forcing him to watch a videotape showing how the girl’s body was dissected during an autopsy, prosecutors said. Once in court, however, Chiang withdrew his confession and pleaded not guilty. He was convicted nonetheless and executed in August 1997, less than a year after the crime took place.
The lawmakers proposed the draft amendment before reaching a consensus with the Judicial Yuan to raise the daily compensation and remove the compensation cap. Currently, the upper limit on compensation is NT$30 million (US$1 million).
If the amendment is passed, Chiang’s family could be compensated more than NT$100 million, based on Chiang’s age of 21 when he was executed in 1997 and on the average life expectancy for Taiwanese males, which stood at 76 in the year he was killed, the legislators said.
Also yesterday, the defense ministry’s District Military Court Prosecutors’ Office in Northern Taiwan decided to open a fresh investigation into the case, saying that there was new evidence showing that the execution was wrongful.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not