Judges show leniency to convicted killers at the expense of the people they affect, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Tsung-hsien (吳宗憲) said yesterday.
Wu was speaking at a news conference cohosted by the National Association of Equality for Life at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, days after the Central Election Commission threw out a KMT-backed referendum on the death penalty.
The proposed referendum would have asked whether part of a Constitutional Court judgement last year that restricted the application of capital punishment should be nullified.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
Judgement 113-Hsien-Pan-8 stipulates that the death sentence is reserved for “the most serious crimes” and can be applied only by a unanimous decision from a collegial panel of professional judges.
The government should acknowledge that the judgement has caused the judiciary to deviate from the spirit of justice, Wu said yesterday.
The limits on the use of the death penalty are tantamount to its abolition, he said.
The stipulation that the death penalty can only be applied to “the most serious crimes” is a vague standard that introduces chaos to the justice system, he said.
Laws should be amended to give people affected by crime a place in deciding on sentences instead of marginalizing their role, Wu said.
The sister of Tu Ming-cheng (?明誠), one of two police officers slain in 2022 in a knife attack in Tainan, said that her brother’s murderer had been proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt and should have been executed by now.
The Tainan District Court found Lin Hsin-wu (林信吾) guilty of the killings and at his first trial in 2023 sentenced him to death. He has appealed, seeking a reduced sentence.
The father of Liu Tsung-hsin (劉宗鑫), a New Taipei City police precinct chief killed by an intoxicated driver with alleged premeditation, said he opposes abolishing the death penalty.
Taiwan should continue to implement the death penalty, Liu’s father said.
An appropriately harsh sentence should be dealt to those who committed heinous crimes to uphold justice for people killed and their loved ones, he said.
The parents of a child surnamed Yang (楊), who was killed in a stabbing incident at a New Taipei City junior-high school in 2023, said that the judge who presided over the case invented excuses for the killer.
Not sentencing people found guilty of the attack was an insult to the parents of those who died, they said.
The juvenile court of the New Taipei City District Court sentenced a boy and a girl — classmates of the slain boy — to nine years and eight years in prison respectively.
The verdict can be appealed.
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