Thu, Oct 07, 1999 page8

• Editorial: A cynical misuse of power

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  The execution of eight convicted criminals last night was perhaps the most contemptible episode in Taiwan's recent judicial history since the ruling KMT stopped routinely murdering its opponents in the mid-1980s.

  Perhaps few people will agree with this newspaper if they know that one of the executed was the notorious rapist and murderer Chen Chin-hsing (陳進興). Most will shrug their shoulders and say "good riddance." This is, unfortunately, exactly what the government wants them to do in as cynical a misuse of state power as one might never hope to see.

  It is not that innocent men died last night -- though the irrevocability of the death penalty always makes this a worrying possibility. And while this newspaper does not support the retention of capital punishment in Taiwan's judicial system, it is not the executions themselves that disgust. Rather it is that men should die -- whatever they might have done -- for the sake of political expediency and to avoid embarrassing the government. For the ugly truth about yesterday's executions is this: they disposed of all but three of the remaining convicts sitting on death row who had been handed their fate under the notorious "bandit law" -- the Act for the Control and Punishment of Banditry (懲治盜匪條例).

  Regular readers of this newspaper will be aware of the controversy that exists over this law. In brief, it was passed in China in 1944 during a period of wartime and great internal strife as a catch-all measure against a bizarre litany of offences, many of which were extremely ill-defined. The law contained a sunset clause, meaning that it had to be renewed every year by the legislature. In 1957 this sunset clause was removed. Legal scholars now argue that at least four times in the period between 1944 and 1957 the law was not renewed in time. This meant that it lapsed; that the legislature might have subsequently gone through the motions of renewing it means nothing since, constitutionally, the law was no longer in existence. Arguably, therefore, any convictions made under the law since the first time it lapsed, in 1945, are invalid and should be overturned.

  This is not to say that Chen Chin-hsing and the seven others should have been freed. Rather that they should have been prosecuted under other parts of the criminal code. But their execution frees the government -- in the most cynical way -- from a major potential embarrassment; namely, what to do with people convicted under the bandit law if the legislature, now researching the matter, confirms the general consensus among legal scholars that the law is not valid.

  Cynical and opportunistic as the government's attitude was, however, three men convicted under the bandit law remain on death row. This is not a sign of leniency, but rather a different sort of callousness. The three are the Hsichih Trio, young men convicted of murder on the confessions they say were forced from them and on evidence so flimsy that Taiwan's prosecutor general himself pleaded their case at appeal. That these three, who have been awaiting execution since 1991, did not meet their quietus last night suggests that even Minister of Justice Yeh Chin-feng (葉金鳳), a mistress of expediency, cannot bring herself to sign their death warrants on a case so obviously and notoriously flawed. With last night's executions the government saved itself embarrassment while displaying a chilling contempt for justice and due process. That the Hsichih Trio remain on death row only emphasizes that contempt.
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