Two high-profile murders that took place in November 1996 remain unsolved to this day: The shooting of eight people, including then-Taoyuan County commissioner Liu Pang-yu (劉邦友), and the murder of women’s rights campaigner Peng Wan-ru (彭婉如).
The cases have reached their 20-year statute of limitations — the time limit for bringing indictments — meaning that charges can no longer be brought. This calls for a discussion as to whether the statute of limitations should exist.
If the state keeps delaying the exercise of its power of prosecution, material evidence related to a case might be lost and witnesses’ memories would gradually fade. Even if the authorities eventually want to bring the case to trial, these factors might cause procedural obstacles.
Statutes of limitations are therefore necessary to prevent inertia in state prosecution and press the state to make active use of its prosecutorial power.
According to Article 80, Paragraph 1, Subparagraph 1 of the Criminal Code, a statute of limitation of 30 years applies to any offense that carries a maximum principal punishment of 10 years or more, or life imprisonment or the death penalty — such as murder. It is assumed that if offenders avoid arrest for longer than the statute of limitation, they are sure to endure some degree of mental and physical suffering from such a long time on the run, which in itself is a type of punishment.
The problem is that this relatively long time limit only came into force on July 1, 2006. Article 8-1 of the Enforcement Law of the Criminal Code stipulates that when the time limit for prosecution spans the periods governed by the old and new versions of this legal provision, the provision most favorable to the offender shall apply.
This means that the old version of Article 80, Paragraph 1, Subparagraph 1 of the Criminal Code, under which the maximum statute of limitations was 20 years, still applies even with regard to murder and other serious crimes such as the Liu and Peng cases. It is doubtful whether such a time period will have any punitive effect on the offenders, who remain out of the reach of the law.
Furthermore, when prosecutions run into obstacles, sometimes it is not because insufficient evidence was collected following the crime, but because it was not possible to make a precise identification using the forensic techniques that were available at the time. In such cases, it might be necessary to wait for scientific advances to clarify the facts.
DNA testing is the most obvious example. In such cases, statutes of limitations become the greatest impediments to discovering the truth, since they prevent new forensic techniques from being put to use.
Other nations have instituted legal provisions to deal with the problems that arise from statutes of limitations.
Section 3281 of the US code states that there is no time limit for bringing an indictment for any offense that is punishable by death. Japan amended its Civil Procedure Law in April 2010, abolishing the statute of limitations for murder and other serious crimes.
Article 29 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court stipulates that no statute of limitations applies with regard to crimes against humanity.
All these provisions can serve as references for Taiwan.
Until the law is amended, jurists must also reconsider the question of whether a statute of limitations should apply when police and prosecutors reopen investigations into old or cold cases.
A statute of limitations should definitely not be allowed to act as a shelter for criminals on the run.
Wu Ching-chin is chair of the Aletheia University Department of Law.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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