Chiou Ho-shun (邱和順) exhausted his final appeal yesterday when the Supreme Court reaffirmed a death sentence for kidnapping and murdering a nine-year-old boy more than two decades ago.
The decision ends the nation’s longest-running legal battle, which saw the case shuffled back and forth between various courts, with allegations by judicial reform advocates that evidence was acquired through torture and forced confessions.
The Supreme Court yesterday ruled that Chiou, detained for most of his adult life, received a fair trial and deserved to die for his 1987 slaying of Lu Cheng (陸正), a boy that prosecutors said he kidnapped, dismembered and then threw in the ocean after a botched kidnapping.
Photo: Courtesy of Lu Cheng’s family
He was also found guilty of the separate robbery and murder of an insurance agent who had just won a lottery-like game popular at the time — receiving another death penalty verdict in the same ruling.
A spokesperson for his pro bono legal team, Lin Feng-jeng (林峰正), called the decision “unacceptable,” saying that the abrupt finding came before the court had time to finish reviewing new information provided by the defense.
“The Supreme Court used two months to affirm a controversial ruling from a lower court in a 23-year-old case. It’s too soon and we believe it to be completely unacceptable that a person’s life can be decided this way,” Lin said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
However, the ruling cited overwhelming proof in support of the verdict, based on eyewitness accounts and other evidence.
Chiou and several accomplices are said to have kidnapped the nine-year-old boy when he was walking home from school on Dec. 21, 1987, in a case that dominated media headlines at the time. Prosecutors said Lu resisted the kidnap attempt by Chiou’s girlfriend and was killed after he bit Chiou’s finger.
Prosecutors said that when Lu’s parents later received a ransom note for NT$5 million (US$173,000), the boy was already dead, having been dumped off the coast of Hsinchu County after being dismembered. The boy’s parents paid NT$1 million to the captors.
After a tip-off in September the following year, police arrested three suspects, who quickly confessed to the kidnapping and also the separate murder of Ko Hung Yu-lan (柯洪玉蘭), the insurance agent. Chiou, in detention for another case at the time, was implicated as the head of the criminal ring.
Police eventually obtained confessions from 11 suspects, but as more details surfaced, -discrepancies emerged in their accounts, including contradictions on where the body was disposed of. Charges against most of the other suspects have since been dismissed.
Chiou, his girlfriend, Wu Shu-chen (吳淑貞), and Lin Kun-ming (林坤明) are the only defendants to have been found guilty. The Supreme Court yesterday also upheld 10 and 17-year sentences for Wu and Lin, in line with the High Court ruling.
Lawyers for Chiou and the two other defendants said the murder investigation into Lu’s killing was riddled with problems, including a lack of forensic evidence linking them to the crime. The murder weapon, body and clothes of the victim were never found and prosecutors have based their case on the confessions.
Two prosecutors and 10 police officers involved in the case were impeached by the Control Yuan more than a decade ago for using violence and threats to acquire speedy confessions — which were still accepted as evidence.
In administrative limbo for much of the past two decades, the Supreme Court in the past continuously refused to confirm the High Court death sentence, citing flaws in the process. The case, as a result, bounced between the two courts while Chiou was kept behind bars.
They would have been released by the middle of next year if the stalemate had kept up following passage of an act designed to speed up criminal proceedings by lawmakers last year. The Speedy Criminal Trials Act (刑事妥速審判法) sets a maximum detention period of eight years for accused murderers.
The three suspects’ 23-year detention without a final conviction has been often cited by judicial advocates as reason to pass the act, designed to free defendants in the event of indecision between courts.
However, Lin said those efforts could have backfired based on yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling, which will send Chiou to death row.
“Instead of providing a way out for suspects indefinitely detained, judges have apparently become more motivated to clear their docket before May next year, when the law comes into effect,” he said. “They’re eager to keep them behind bars.”
Lawyers for Chiou and two accomplices had previously expected that the Supreme Court would again order a re-trial of May’s High Court ruling, as the court had done 11 times in the past.
His legal team said their petitions would continue, although they did not know in what form.
Lu’s father, Lu Chin-te (陸晉德), was unavailable for comment as of press time.
According to staff at Lu Chin-te’s company, the Lu family are currently travelling in the UK and are probably unaware of the lastest ruling.
In a previous interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper), however, Lu Chin-te said that “delayed justice is not justice,” adding the case, bogged down for so many years, had taken its toll on the family, body and soul.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY WANG CHING-YI
As eight basketball-playing international students appealed to the Taiwanese basketball industry after they were excluded from the draft of an upcoming new league merging the P.League+ and the T1 League, the new league’s preparatory committee spokesperson Chang Shu-jen (張樹人) yesterday said the committee would tomorrow discuss the supplementary measures and whether the international students can join the draft. The students on Tuesday called for support on their right to play in the upcoming new league, after a merger involving the two leagues impacted their eligibility for the draft. The international players from the University Basketball Association (UBA), led by first pick prospect
WARNING: China has stepped up harassment of foreign vessels after its new regulation took effect last month, an official said, citing an incident in the Diaoyutai Islands The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday linked China’s seizure of a Taiwanese fishing vessel illegally operating in its territorial waters to Beijing’s new regulation authorizing the China Coast Guard to seize boats in waters it claims. Chinese officials boarded and then seized a Taiwanese fishing vessel operating near China’s coast close to Kinmen County late on Tuesday and took it to a Chinese port, the CGA said. The Penghu-registered squid fishing vessel Da Jin Man No. 88 (大進滿88) was boarded and seized by China Coast Guard east-northeast of Liaoluo Bay (料羅灣), 17.5 nautical miles (32.4km) from Taiwan’s restricted waters off Kinmen,
Some foreign companies are considering moving Taiwanese employees out of China after Beijing said it could impose the death penalty on “die-hard” Taiwanese independence advocates, four people familiar with the matter said. The new guidelines have caused some Taiwanese expatriates and foreign multinationals operating in China to scramble to assess their legal risks and exposure, said the people, who include a lawyer and two executives with direct knowledge of the discussions. “Several companies have come to us to assess the risks to their personnel,” said the lawyer, James Zimmerman, a Beijing-based partner at the Perkins Coie law firm. He declined to identify
BOLSTERING DEFENSE: The explosive is 40 percent more powerful than those in use and could be deployed for Hsiung Feng II and III missiles, a government source said The Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has developed a polycyclic nitroamine explosive, commonly known as CL-20, which is the most powerful non-nuclear explosive known, a government source said yesterday on condition of anonymity. The institute has significantly improved explosive and rocket propellant research and development in recent years, the source said. A new factory was established in June 2022 with NT$540 million (US$16.6 million) in equipment installed, the source said. A central complex that would house 50-gallon (189 liters) and 300-gallon (1,136 liters) explosive mixer machines, as well as a storage device, was constructed in the factory, the institute said. The explosive is