The Supreme Court yesterday rejected an appeal from death row prisoner Cheng Wu-sung (鄭武松) to suspend his execution.
In September last year, the Constitutional Court issued Constitutional Judgement No. 8, which said that although the death penalty is constitutional, it should only be applied in “exceptional cases.”
This led to Cheng filing for a retrial on the grounds that he could be rehabilitated.
Photo: Chang Wen-chuan, Taipei Times
The constitutional judgement allows for the death penalty only for the “most serious” of premeditated crimes and if the case followed the strictest requirements of due process.
The judgement does not allow for the death penalty in cases where the verdict was not unanimous, where the offender did not have a lawyer present during their final appeal and where the offender has a history of mental disorders or disabilities.
Following the judgement, death row prisoners or the head prosecutor of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office could petition for extraordinary appeals.
There are 36 prisoners on death row, including Cheng, who was sentenced for the 2005 murder of his ex-wife and her boss.
At one point, he wrote a letter to the Ministry of Justice requesting an earlier execution date.
Chen’s filing said that under the new constitutional judgement, his original sentencing should have established the factors that made his case meet the threshold for “most serious” of premeditated crimes to justify the death penalty.
Furthermore, the court did not sufficiently prove that he could not be rehabilitated, his filing said.
The High Court’s Kaohsiung branch did not find sufficient evidence in Chen’s filing to meet the requirements for a retrial and rejected his request.
The Supreme Court upheld the ruling.
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