The defendant sentenced to death 11 times in Taiwan’s longest ongoing criminal case has no hope that his newest retrial will be any different, his lawyer said yesterday on the opening day of the trial at the Taiwan High Court.
“Chiou Ho-shun [邱和順] lost hope long ago,” lawyer Stephen Lee (李勝雄), who has represented Chiou at all 11 retrials, said in an interview.
This is the 12th time the Taipei branch of the Taiwan High Court hears the case, which has been roundly condemned by the Judicial Reform Foundation and strongly criticized by Amnesty International for a series of flaws — most notably the submission of coerced confessions as evidence and the lack of forensic evidence linking the defendants to the crimes.
At the opening hearing yesterday, the presiding judge said the 21-year-old case had been tried so many times that the details should be clear by now. He said he had hope the court would bring a “speedy” conclusion to the case, adding that the court’s duty was “of course, also to be fair.”
Chiou became upset and raised his voice as he gave a brief statement to the court calling for justice, whereupon the judge asked him to calm down and repeated that the trial would be speedy and fair.
Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific regional office in Hong Kong released a statement on Monday calling for a fair trial and urging the High Court to heed flaws in the case cited by the Supreme Court last month when it ordered this latest retrial.
Those flaws included the lack of forensic evidence.
“As of today, no material evidence such as the murder weapon ... [has] been found,” Amnesty said, calling on the court to honor the presumption of innocence.
Amnesty also criticized previous trials for including confessions extracted through torture in the rulings.
Chiou and two co-defendants are charged in a case that combines two separate murders, originally with 12 defendants. Chiou stands accused in the presumed murder of 10-year-old Lu Cheng (陸正), who was kidnapped in Hsinchu in 1987 but whose body was never found, and the murder of Ko Hung Yu-lan (柯洪玉蘭), an insurance agent. Lin Kun-ming (林坤明) is also accused in both murders, while the third defendant, Wu Shu-chen (吳淑貞), is accused in the Lu murder.
Of the other original defendants, one died in prison, while the rest lost hope during their trials of any acquittal and chose to begin serving their prison sentences rather than continue appealing.
At the 10th retrial, Lin and Wu were sentenced to 17 and 11 years respectively, while Chiou again received the death penalty.
“Every time, I hope that this time the retrial will be different. All the lawyers involved in the case believe these people are innocent, otherwise they wouldn’t have gotten involved,” Lee said.
Chiou and Lin have been detained throughout their successive trials, while Wu was freed and lives at home although not acquitted.
“They keep finding her guilty, yet they released her without bail. It is a very strange [action on the part of the court],” Lee said.
In the 1990s, allegations of grievous faults in the case led then-prosecutor Wang Ching-feng (王清峰), now minister of justice, to investigate. After evidence emerged that the defendants had been tortured into confessing, the Control Yuan in 1994 impeached the police officers implicated.
In 2003, police also admitted that a man sentenced to death in a separate criminal case had confessed to Lu’s murder before his execution.
At the last High Court trial, a team of lawyers from the nonprofit Legal Aid Foundation’s Taipei and Banciao branches joined the defense counsel and raised several issues, including an alibi indicating that Chiou and his codefendants were not in Hsinchu at the time of Lu’s kidnapping.
The court nevertheless upheld the convictions on April 13. The case then went before the Supreme Court, which ordered a retrial on Aug. 6.
In a joint statement with other civic groups on Monday, the Judicial Reform Foundation said: “The key issue is this ... Despite the lack of evidence, the judges are not willing to [honor] the most basic of judicial principles: the presumption of innocence.”
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
RSS