Capital punishment in Taiwan

Capital punishment is a legal form of punishment in the Republic of China, a country with effective jurisdiction over the island of Taiwan and the Pescadores, as well as Kinmen, Wuchiu, the Matsu Islands, the Pratas Islands and Itu Aba, and--before 1949--over the Chinese mainland.

Before 2000 Taiwan had a relatively high execution rate when strict laws were still in effect in the harsh political environment. However, after controversial cases during the 1990s and the changing attitudes of some officials towards abolition, the number of executions dropped significantly, with only three in 2005 and none between 2006-09. Executions resumed in 2010.

Capital offenses

Under military law

The Criminal Law of the Armed Forces (陸海空軍刑法) rules the following crimes eligible for the death penalty on military personnel:

• Treason (Article 14, 15)
• Collaboration (Article 17, 18)
• Espionage (Article 19, 20)
• Defection (Article 24)
• Malfeasance (Article 26, 27)
• Disclosure of intelligence or secrets (Article 31)
• Desertion (Article 41, 42)
• Disobeying orders (Article 47, 48)
• Mutiny (Article 49, 50)
• Hijacking (Article 53)
• Destroying military supplies and equipment (Article 58)
• Stealing and selling ammunition (Article 65)
• Fabricating orders (Article 66)

Under civilian law

A sign at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport warns arriving travelers that drug trafficking is a capital offense in the Republic of China. (photo taken in 2005)

The Republic of China Criminal Code (zh:中華民國刑法) rules the following offenses eligible for the death penalty, although none of them carries a mandatory death penalty:

• Civil disturbance as ringleader (Article 101)
• Treason (Article 103, 104, 105, 107)
• Abandoning territory in charge (Article 120)
• Hijacking (Article 185-1, 185-2)
• Sexual Offenses with murder (Article 226-1)
• Civil servant forcing others to cultivate, sell or transport poppy plants to manufacture opium or morphine (Article 261)
• Murder (Article 271, 272)
• Robbery with homicide, severe injury, rape, kidnapping or arson (Article 328, 332)
• Piracy (Article 333, 334)
• Kidnapping with homicide, severe injury or rape (Article 347, 348)

Article 63 of the Criminal Code also rules that the death penalty cannot be imposed on offenders aged under 18 or above 80 for any offenses.

Other special laws which rule non-compulsory capital offenses:

• Civil Aviation Act
  • Hijacking
  • Endangering flight safety or aviation facilities by force and causing death
  • Using unapproved aviation products, appliances and parts to cause death
• Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act
  • Manufacturing, transporting or selling Category One narcotics (Heroin, Morphine, Opium, Cocaine and their derivative products)
  • Compelling others to use Category One narcotics by means of violence, coercion, deception or other illegal methods
  • Civil servant manufacturing, transporting or selling Category Two narcotics (Opium poppy, Coca, Cannabis, Amphetamines, Pethidine, Pentazocine, and their derivative products)
• Punishment Act for Violation to Military Service System
  • Carrying weapons by group, obstructing a military service and causing death
  • Carrying weapons by group, fighting publicly against a military service and
    • Caused death or
    • Is the ringleader
• Child and Youth Sexual Transaction Prevention Act
  • Committing and purposely killing the victim of
    • Making a person under 18 engage in sexual transaction by violence, menace, medicament, control, hypnogenesis or other ways against the will of himself/herself
    • Intending to making a person under 18 engage in sexual transaction, and to deliver or accept him/her to or from other person by dealing, impawning or other ways and by violence, menace, medicament, control, hypnogenesis or other ways against the will of himself/herself
• Punishment Act for Genocide
  • Intending to commit genocide and committing any of the following
    • Murder
    • Serious injury, physically or mentally
    • Impairing fertility
    • Abducting Children
    • Other ways sufficient to elimination the group
• Controlling Guns, Ammunition and Knives Act
  • Manufacturing, selling or transporting cannons, shoulder arms, machine guns, submachine guns, carbines, automatic rifles, rifles, traditional carbines, pistols, or any types of artillery shells, bombs and explosives without approval with intention to commit a crime by himself/herself or assist others to commit a crime
• Act for the Control and Punishment of Smuggling
  • Smuggling, resisting arrest or inspection with weapon and caused death

In practice, since 2003 almost all death sentences and executions have been restricted to murder-related offenses. The last execution solely for crimes other than homicide took place in October 2002 in the case of a Pingtung County fisherman who trafficked 295 kg heroin in 1993.

Defunct laws

The following two laws previously gave certain offenses a mandatory death penalty, and have historically made a significant contribution to the numbers of people executed:

• Act for the Control and Punishment of Rebellion (zh:懲治叛亂條例, rescinded in May 1991) which imposed a mandatory death sentence on treason, espionage and defection. Enacted in 1949 when the Central Government had just retreated to Taiwan, this law was applicable in both military and common courts and played an important role during the white terror period. Information about people sentenced according to this law was restricted because they counted as court-martials. In two high-profile cases, Bo Yang and Shih Ming-teh were both sentenced to death under this law, but were finally given life imprisonment due to worldwide political pressure during their trials.

• Act for the Control and Punishment of Banditry (zh:懲治盜匪條例, rescinded in January 2002) which ruled a mandatory death penalty on kidnapping, piracy or robbery along with murder, rape and arson. Originally enacted as a short-term special law by the Kuomintang government during the Second Sino-Japanese War period, the law was extended for a long time for a variety of reasons.

Execution process

A ROC judicial execution requires a final sentence from the Supreme Court of the Republic of China and a death order signed by the Minister of Justice. After the Supreme Court issues a final death sentence, the case is transferred to the Ministry of Justice, where the Minister of Justice issues a final secret execution date. Generally, the Ministry of Justice will allow some time for the condemned person to meet his or her family, arrange for any religious rites and even get married before the execution. Should any new evidence or procedural flaw that may influence the verdict be discovered during this period, the condemned prisoner may make a plea to the Ministry of Justice. This may then delay the death warrant, if the Solicitor General or Supreme Prosecutors' Office makes a special appeal to the Supreme Court for retrial. However, such cases are very rare: to date only one condemned prisoner avoided capital punishment in this manner. The President of Republic of China can also award clemency, but so far only President Chiang Kai-Shek ever exercised this legal right on an individual prisoner, once in 1957. President Lee Teng-hui also ordered two nationwide commutations in 1988 and 1991 in which two sentences were commuted from death to life imprisonment.

The death order from the Minister of Justice is received and performed by the High Prosecutors' offices, so executions are carried out inside the detention centers of the five cities having a High Court: Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Hualien. Like Japan, ROC death row inmates are kept in detention centers but not prisons, and under harsher conditions than general prisoners. They are housed two inmates to a cell (or solitary imprisonment in cases of misbehavior or violence), handcuffed and fettered all day long (although since late 2006 the Ministry of Justice has been experimenting with unfettering death row inmates who behave themselves). Prisoners on death row are only allowed to leave the cell for a half-hour a day for exercise, but are allowed to read censored newspapers and books as well as practice religious activities with approved religious personnel.

Executions are carried out by shooting using a handgun aimed at the heart from the back, or aimed at the brain stem under the ear if the prisoner consents to organ donation. The execution time used to be 5:00 a.m., but was changed to 9:00 p.m. in 1995 to reduce officials' workload. It was changed again to 7:30 p.m. in 2010. Executions are performed in secret: nobody is informed beforehand, including the condemned. The execution chamber is located in the prison complex. The condemned is brought to the chamber by car and pays respect to the statue of Ksitigarbha located outside the chamber before entering. Before the execution, the prisoner is brought to a special court next to the execution chamber to have his or her identity confirmed and any last words recorded. The prisoner is then brought to the execution chamber and served a last meal (which includes a bottle of kaoliang). The condemned prisoner is then injected with strong anaesthetic to render him or her completely senseless, laid flat on the ground, face down, and shot. The executioner then burns votive bank notes for the deceased before carrying away the corpse. It is customary for the condemned to place a NT$500 or 1000 banknote in their leg irons as a tip for the executioners.

After the execution, the High Prosecutors' Office will issue the official announcement of the execution. Although the Ministry of Justice has studied other methods including hanging and lethal injection since the early 1990s, execution by shooting (performed by local bailiffs or military policemen) is the only execution method used in the ROC currently (including military executions).

ROC military sentences and executions are administered only by the Ministry of National Defense and have no connection with the Ministry of Justice. Military sentences and executions are carried out in military courts and prisons across the island as well as Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu. Unlike the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of National Defense does not release detailed information on executions, and so little information is available.

Execution statistics

The ROC's Ministry of Justice annually publishes detailed statistics on each year's executions, including the executed person's name, age, sex, crime, nationality, education, etc. The numbers of executions since 1987 are listed below:

The Number of Executed People in the ROC since 1987

1987	1988	1989	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000
10	22	69	78	59	35	18	17	16	22	38	32	24	17
2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
10	9	7	3	3	0	0	0	0	4	5	6	6	5	6

The execution tally was at its height in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the martial law had just been lifted and social order was destabilized. The strict Act for the Control and Punishment of Banditry resulted in the execution of many prisoners.

Among the executed were a small number of foreign nationals from the People's Republic of China, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. They were executed in the ROC for kidnapping, murder or drug trafficking offenses.

Controversial death sentences

Human vivisection

There are accounts of organs being removed from executed prisoners while they were still medically alive.

According to the Death Penalty Procedural Rules (執行死刑規則) of Taiwan, executees who are willing to donate their organs are shot in the head. Twenty minutes after the execution, an examination is conducted to verify the death of the condemned person. Prisoners donating organs are sent to hospitals for organ collection after completion of the execution is confirmed.

According to the Human Organ Transplantation Act (人體器官移植條例) of Taiwan, an organ donor can only donate after being judged brain-dead by a medical doctor. When a ventilator is in use, there must be an observation period of 12 hours for the first evaluation and a four-hour period for the second evaluation to reach a judgement of brain death.

In Taiwan there have been cases of executees being sent to hospitals for organ collection without legal confirmation of brain death, leading to accusations that human vivisection for organ collection and transplantation is in practice in Taiwan. There was a case in 1991 in which an executee was found to be still breathing unaided when being prepared for organ collection in the Taipei Veterans General Hospital. The executee was sent back to the execution ground to complete the execution. This case caused the Taipei Veterans General Hospital to refuse organ collection of executees for eight years.

The Hsichih Trio case

In March 1991 a Hsichih couple, Wu Ming-han (吳銘漢) and Yeh Ying-lan (葉盈蘭), were found robbed and brutally murdered inside their apartment. In August 1991 police arrested their neighbor Wang Wen-hsiao (王文孝), then serving in the ROC Marine Corps, based on Wang's bloody fingerprint found at the scene. He confessed to the murder after investigators discovered evidence of him breaking in and burglarizing the house, but police doubted he could have killed two adults so easily and brutally without help. Under torture, Wang confessed to help from three accomplices who lived in the same community--Su Chien-ho (蘇建和), Chuang Lin-hsun (莊林勳) and Liu Bin-lang (劉秉郎). These four young men further confessed that they gang raped Yeh Ying-lan during their break-in, but the autopsy of Yeh's body showed no traces of sexual assault.

Wang Wen-hsiao was court-martialed and speedily executed in January 1992. The other three defendants were prosecuted under the Act for the Control and Punishment of Banditry, which stipulated compulsory death sentences for their crimes if found guilty. During their trial the defendants repeatedly claimed they were forced to make false confessions under torture and were not guilty, but the judges did not believe them.

In February 1995 the Supreme Court of the Republic of China found against the defendants. According to procedure, the three should then have been executed by shooting as soon as possible, but Minister of Justice Ma Ying-jeou refused to sign their death warrants and returned the whole case back to the Supreme Court in hope of a retrial, citing shortcomings such as:

• Only two pieces of evidence were brought against the defendants: Wang Wen-hsiao's confessions and the NT$ 24 dollars (less than $1.00 US) found in Chuang Lin-hsun's home and considered to be booty. The evidence was too weak: Wang Wen-hsiao was executed too early to witness the case and NT$24 was a tiny amount.
• Although all four defendants claimed they were tortured during police interrogation, at which there was no lawyer present, the judges did not investigate this point thoroughly. Wang Wen-hsiao's brother Wang Wen-chung (王文忠) even claimed Hsichih police originally asked his brother to confess as an accomplice, but he had refused.
• There was no proof that Yeh Ying-lan was raped.

Between 1995 and 2000 Ma Ying-jeou and his three successors filed several retrial requests with the Supreme Court, but all were rejected. Meantime, this case drew the attention of Amnesty International and was widely broadcast throughout the world, nicknamed as "the Hsichih Trio".

The Supreme Court ordered a retrial on May 19, 2000, just one day before former President Chen Shui-bian's inauguration. On January 13, 2003, the Taiwan High Court passed a verdict that they were not guilty and released them, but the victims' families were unwilling to accept this and appealed. On June 29, 2007, the Taiwan High Court once again found the trio guilty and condemned them to death, but surprisingly did not put them in custody because "the 3 defendants are already famous worldwide and will be identified in any place", the first such case in the ROC history. On Nov 12, 2010, the Taiwan High Court delivered another verdict, revoking the previous decision and finding the three not guilty, "as there was no proof for the crime they were accused of." The prosecutor appealed again, and the Supreme Court ordered yet another retrial on Apr. 21, 2011. On Aug. 31, 2012, the High Court reaffirmed the innocence of the three defendants. According to criminal procedure legislation that came into effect in 2010, when court proceedings have begun on a criminal case more than six years previously, and the Supreme Court had ordered more than three retrials, if the High Court has already found the defendants to be non-guilty twice and decided non-guilty again in the third trial, the prosecutor can no longer appeal. The High Court delivered the first non-guilty verdict in 2003, and again in 2010. With the 2012 verdict, the Hsichih trio meets the condition of the new criminal legislation, and the case is concluded.

Lu Cheng's case

In December 1997 Tainan native Lu Cheng (盧正), an unemployed former policeman, was charged with the kidnapping and murder of a local woman, Chan Chun-tzu (詹春子), who along with her husband were both former high school classmates of Lu's. The Supreme Court of the Republic of China sentenced Lu to death in June 2000 but his family noted several suspicious points:

• Like the Hsichih Trio, Lu Cheng had been tortured by police and was forced into making a confession.
• The judges intentionally ignored his alibi that he had been with his young niece at the time of the murder.
• The kidnapper phoned the victim's husband during the crime. If Lu Cheng had committed the kidnapping, the victim's husband should have been able to identify his voice.
• The verdict stated that Lu Cheng had used his shoelaces to strangle the victim. However, the autopsy showed the victim's strangulation burns did not match Lu's shoelaces.

Despite these suspicious points, Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan ordered Lu Cheng's execution on September 7, 2000, just one day before that year's Mid-Autumn Festival. It was rumored that Lu Cheng remained conscious after receiving five anesthetic injections at 3:00 a.m., so the officials had to shoot him while he was conscious and his eyes remained opened after his death. Lu Cheng's family continues to protest but there has been no concrete official response to date.

Chiang Kuo-ching's case

President Ma Ying-jeou and the Ministry of National Defense have made a public apology to the family of former Air Force Pvt. Chiang Kuo-ching (江國慶) for his wrongful execution in 1997. Chiang was arrested for the 1996 rape and murder of a five-year-old girl. He was tortured into making a false confession by military counterintelligence. After reopening the case, investigators arrested Hsu Rong-chou, who had a record of sexual abuses, on 28 January 2011. Hsu then confessed to the crime. The officials who handled the original investigation were protected from prosecution by the statute of limitations for public employees.

Religious attitudes

For capital punishment

• Hsing Yun, founder of the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order, claimed that the abolishment of capital punishment is not valid under the laws of karma and vipāka in Buddhism. He has written,

"However, although "severe punishments in chaotic time (亂世用重典)" do not necessarily have effects in stopping crimes, abolishing capital punishment is not valid according to the laws of karma and vipāka in Buddhism, because "a karma as such induces a vipāka as such (如是因，招感如是果)"; having committed a karma without experiencing the vipāka is not compatible with reason. Hence, we can wish to reduce the capital punishment, not to recur to the capital punishment, to substitute the capital punishment by other measures, but we do not claim for the abolishment of the capital punishment."

In Buddhist sutras, Angulimala was pardoned after he renounced his life as a killer and became a monk, and Mahākāśyapa died for karma from killing in a past life.

Temporary Moratorium between 2006 and 2009

These controversial cases apparently influenced the local judicial system. Chen Ding-nan publicly announced his intention to abolish the death penalty in May 2001 and his views were backed by President Chen Shui-bian. Although the right to abolish death penalty is held by the Legislative Yuan which is currently dominated by the opposing Pan-blue coalition, as well as being more conservative on this issue, the Democratic Progressive Party government forced a moratorium by not signing death warrants except for serious and noncontroversial cases. As a result, the number of executions dropped significantly from 2002. In an October 2006 interview, Chen Ding-nan's successor Shih Mao-lin (施茂林) said he would not sign any death warrants for the 19 defendants who had already been sentenced to death by the Supreme Court, because their cases were still being reviewed inside the Ministry. These conditions remained in effect until Chen Shui-bian's tenure expired on May 20, 2008.

In May 2008, Chen Shui-bian's successor Ma Ying-jeou nominated Wang Ching-feng as the Minister of Justice. Wang also opposed capital punishment and delayed every case delivered to the Minister's Office. Until March 2010, a total of 44 prisoners given death sentences by the Supreme Court were detained by the Ministry but Wang still publicly announced her strong opposition to capital punishment during media interviews. This caused controversy and the consensus suddenly broke after entertainer Pai Ping-ping (whose daughter Pai Hsiao-yen was kidnapped and murdered in 1997) held a high-profile protest against Wang. Wang, who originally refused to step down, bowed to social pressure and resigned on March 11, 2010. Wang's successor Tseng Yung-Fu (曾勇夫) promised premier Wu Den-yih that he would resume executions.

Execution Resumed

On April 30, 2010, Tseng Yung-Fu ordered 4 executions, ending the 52-month moratorium. Catherine Ashton, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, of the European Union condemned the executions and called on the Taiwanese authorities to abolish capital punishment.

External links

• The Ministry of Justice of the Republic of China (Chinese)
• The Judicial Yuan of the Republic of China (Chinese)