Mon, Jun 18, 2001 page2

• Family seeks an eye for an eye

  Since a court handed down a life imprisonment sentence to a man who killed a girl by slashing her body 176 times, many sympathetic visitors to a Web site commemorating the victim have demanded that the offender be given the death penalty instead

  • By Jou Ying-cheng / STAFF REPORTER
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  After Vivi's death, her sister and friends created a Web page in memory of her. Now the Web page has become a discussion forum where people have been engaging in intense debate over whether the life sentence imposed on the 20-year-old girl's murderer was too lenient.

  Chang Ya-ling (張雅玲), or "Vivi" as her sisters and friends called her, had her life taken by stalker Wang Hung-wei (王鴻偉), 25, on Sept. 26 last year. That morning Wang drove his white Mercedes car into Vivi, knocking her unconscious as she left her home in Tamshui for work. He then put her into the trunk of his car and drove off after which he attacked her twice, inflicting 176 slashes with a watermelon knife before abandoning her body in a vacant lot, the court judgement says.

  

  A page from Vivi's Web site showing pictures of the victim.

  Wang was promptly arrested on the day of Vivi's death. The prosecution charged him in November with murder and requested that he be sentenced to death in view of the brutality of the crime. But the Shihlin District Court on May 22 sentenced Wang to life imprisonment.

  

  Jennifer Chang looks at pictures of her murdered sister, Vivi. The Changs have appealed the life imprisonment given to Vivi's killer.

  PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES

  More lenient than expected, the sentence upset the victim's grieving family. An e-mail written by Jennifer Chang (張雅琪), Vivi's elder sister, then began to spread over the Internet.

  "Does one deserve 176 cuts for rejecting someone's advances?" the victim's sister, a 23-year-old employee of a securities firm in Taipei, asked in the title of the letter.

  In the widely forwarded e-mail, the broken-hearted sister said that her family was not demanding that the murderer necessarily be sentenced to death. "We just want the truth ... Don't let my sister die without having her soul comforted."

  According to Taiwan's criminal code, a murder offense is punishable by death, imprisonment for life or for not less than 10 years.

  Shihlin District Court judge Hsu Yung-huang (許永煌) in the court's judgement explained why a life sentence rather than a death sentence was handed down in the case. He said that the offender had no previous criminal record, had confessed to the crime, had apologized to the victim's family in court and had reached a civil compensation agreement with the family.

  Wang reached an agreement with Vivi's family whereby he will pay NT$8.6 million in compensation to the Changs.

  All this demonstrated that the accused was repentant and was willing to make amends for his deed and therefore should be given a chance to reform himself, the judgement said.

  But Vivi's family cannot accept this. "Someone that has told the truth may be remorseful," Jennifer Chang said in an interview with the Taipei Times, "but Wang Hung-wei kept lying all along."

  During the trial, Wang claimed that he wanted to drive Vivi to work on the morning of her death but he hit her with his car by accident after she refused his offer. He said that he then put her into the trunk of his car to take her to hospital but when, on the way, he opened the trunk to check on Vivi, she took a watermelon chopper to attack him so he grabbed the knife, slashing Vivi in self-defense. He then closed the trunk and continued to drive before stopping a second time and opening the trunk again, at which Vivi again resisted him so he slashed her once more, Wang said.

  Taking into account the postmortem report and the testimonies from witnesses, the court denied Wang's claim that he had hit Vivi by accident and had cut her in self-defense.

  Sentence too light

  In the opinion of the victim's family, this position of the court was inconsistent with the sentence it handed down.

  "But why did the court still say that such a liar was remorseful?" Jennifer Chang said. "His confession kept changing from one court hearing to another. All he did was try to escape responsibility."

  Furthermore, the victim's family suspect Wang had accomplices but they have no evidence of this.

  Even at the end of the final hearing when the judge asked Wang if he had anything further to say, according to Jennifer Chang, "he was completely expressionless when he turned to us and said he was very sorry."

  She said that the compensation agreement was also a lie, and that Wang's family paid only NT$2.6 million.

  "Does this mean that somebody who is powerful and rich can mix up right and wrong and escape the punishment he deserves?" she said.

  Media reports at the time of the murder also said that Wang showed indifference to the whole matter when being held at a police station as a suspect. Wang is the son of the head of a construction firm in Tamshui and was brought up in an affluent environment, reports said.

  In her e-mail, Jennifer Chang asked people who received it to forward it to as many friends as possible.

  "Perhaps you or your friends could help us seek justice. We also hope that the case will draw more public attention so the judiciary will deliver the justice we deserve," she wrote.

  Though she did not specify what kind of help she sought, the touching e-mail brought many visitors to Vivi's memorial Web site, which was created a month after her death.

  The Web site contains memorial articles, photos of Vivi, stories about her and a message board. Jennifer Chang said she wished Vivi could see the Web site and know how much her family and friends miss her.

  It was a rather quiet site visited only by those who were close to Vivi and her family until she sent out the e-mail late last month following the court's judgement.

  Now all kinds of messages appear on the Web site. Most of the messages are condemnations of the criminal with demands that Wang must pay for his crime with his life attached.

  "Why give him [Wang] a chance? Anyone who kills people should pay with his life! Did he [Wang] give the victim a chance before she died?" wrote a person who signed her name as "Cathy," one of many to hold this view.

  In contrast, few comments against the death penalty have appeared on the Web site and those that have been posted have all been followed by a string of criticism.

  Moreover, many of the messages are marked with emotion. Some visitors to the site, for example, discussed what kinds of torture and execution they wanted Wang to suffer, while some went to great lengths to try and find a word that showed their contempt for the murderer.

  What is perhaps most notable regarding the views expressed in the online exchanges is that almost everyone who holds that the murderer must die mentions the idea of retribution, while little is said about capital punishment as a deterrent.

  Hearing society

  This represents a common view and suggests that Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan's (陳定南) previous talk about abolition was very much out of tune with what many people feel.

  In a press conference marking his first year in office last month, Chen expressed his stance in favor of abolishing the death penalty. Noting that a high percentage of people in Taiwan still supported the death penalty, he repeatedly stressed that his ministry's priority over the issue was to educate people to think that "the death penalty as a deterrent against crime has been proven ineffective," and that "the death penalty is not a panacea to crime." However, many believe that in his desire to abolish the death penalty, the minister has failed to address the issue of retribution.

  The life sentence has been appealed by both sides. Asked whether her family could accept it if Wang told the High Court the whole truth and were still sentenced to life imprisonment, Jennifer Chang told the Taipei Times, "as long as he told the truth and truly repented, yes."

  However, she also said that capital punishment is what Wang justly deserves.

  Nine months after the tragedy, Vivi's sister remains calm when describing how one chop to her sister's neck almost severed her head from her body.

  "I'd never thought about the issue of abolishing the death penalty until Vivi died. Now we understand the fear and helplessness felt by a victim's family.

  "Some people tried to comfort me saying that a life sentence is already the second severest penalty and that even a death penalty for Wang would not bring back my sister. However, the current prison system does not make us feel safe."

  She said she believes that prisons fail to reform offenders and that parole is too easily awarded.

  "The brutal Wang Hung-wei could be granted parole in 10 years or more ... I feel it is terrible that such a dangerous person could walk freely in society."

  Under the current system, a prisoner serving a life sentence has the opportunity of being granted parole after spending 15 years in jail. Until 1997, parole could be obtained after serving as little as 10 years of a life sentence.

  There were no ready statistics showing how many years life prisoners spend on average in jail before receiving parole, a senior official at the justice ministry's corrections department said.

  But according to the official, inmates serve 12 years or more of a life sentence before being granted parole, since the new 15-year minimum came into effect less than four years ago. The law was not made retroactive.

  When asked, Jennifer Chang said that her family would be more relieved if her sister's murderer were executed.

  She agrees in principle to a "life sentence without parole" as long as certain conditions are met.

  "I would agree if prisoners had to work for their living. But I wouldn't if they don't have to work, but simply live off taxpayers' money."

  Still, she hesitated and said, "I don't know whether it's because I am a family member of a [murder] victim, but actually I agree more with `an eye for an eye.'"

  Although she is uncertain what she should do next, after the tragedy faded out of the media's limelight, Vivi's sister used a unique way to let people know what it is like to be part of a family that has suffered such great pain and hopes that this will help bring a more just conclusion.

  "We're not trying to pressure the court into handing down a particular sentence. We just hope more people will show greater concern about the case so that the court will handle it more carefully," she said.

  Vivi's Web site:

  http://vivi.eadplus.com/index.htm
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