Taiwan’s longest running criminal case, marred by evidence of grievous violations by police and an apparent lack of forensic evidence, was headed again for the Supreme Court after the Taiwan High Court in Taipei yesterday convicted three defendants in a kidnapping and murder case for the 11th time.
Chiou Ho-shun (邱和順) was sentenced to death for the 11th time, while Wu Shu-chen (吳淑貞) and Lin Kun-ming (林坤明) were sentenced to 11 and 17 years respectively in the latest retrial of the 22-year-old case.
After hearing the sentence in detention yesterday, a distraught Chiou shouted: “I didn’t do it. You didn’t investigate and sentenced me to death instead.”
The Supreme Court has rejected the High Court’s ruling every time in a case that lawyers say is riddled with problems, including the submission as evidence of recorded confessions, despite evidence that the defendants were tortured by police. In 1994, the Control Yuan impeached two prosecutors and 10 police officers involved in the case for using violence and threats when interrogating the suspects.
In addition, the body of the victim, Lu Cheng (陸正), was never found and the defense counsel says there is no forensic evidence against the defendants.
On Dec. 21, 1987, the 10-year-old Lu went missing after school in Hsinchu City. A kidnapper telephoned his home and demanded a ransom of NT$5 million (US$148,000). The family paid NT$1 million in ransom nine days later, but Lu was never released.
In September of the following year the police received a tip-off and arrested three juveniles, who confessed to the crime and to murdering an insurance agent, Ko Hung Yu-lan (柯洪玉蘭), in a separate case. They implicated Chiou Ho-shun (邱和順), who was in detention for another case at the time, as the head of the criminal ring.
In total, 12 suspects were charged. All but one confessed.
As more details surfaced, however, discrepancies emerged in the defendants’ accounts of the crime.
This included contradictions on where the kidnappers had disposed of the body.
Twenty-two years after the murder, Chiou, Lin and Wu are the only defendants still at court.
One defendant in the case, also sentenced to death, died of illness in prison, while the others, who received prison sentences, eventually dropped their right to appeal after losing hope of being acquitted.
Speaking at the High Court yesterday, Chiou’s lawyer Lee Sheng-hsiung (李勝雄) said justice had not been served.
“The defendant was threatened and tortured [during interrogation] and the entire case is riddled with holes,” he said.
Lu’s father Lu Chin-te (陸晉德), however, said he hoped the Supreme Court would finally approve the High Court’s sentence.
Lu said he believed the defendants were guilty and that he hoped the courts would put an end to the ordeal because he was “very tired, physically and emotionally.”
The Judicial Reform Foundation yesterday said that the court system had failed to give the defendants a speedy trial and that the courts had violated Article 156 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) by accepting the defendant’s confessions as evidence.
Article 156 stipulates that confessions may be submitted as evidence if they are “not extracted by violence, threat, inducement, fraud, exhausting interrogation, unlawful detention or other improper means.”
Judicial Reform Foundation executive director Lin Feng-jeng (林峰正) said: “This case has dragged on for 22 years. The lack of efficiency is unacceptable.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS