The Presumption of Innocence is Fundamental: Perspectives on the Chiou Ho-shun Case

Regarding the 1987 homicide cases of K'o-hung Yü-lan and Lu Cheng (hereinafter the Chiou Ho-shun case), the Taiwan High Court on April 13, 2009, in its tenth remand, once again ignored that confessions were obtained through torture and that there was a lack of direct evidence, sentencing Chiou Ho-shun to death, Lin K'un-ming to 17 years imprisonment, and Wu Shu-chen to 11 years imprisonment. The defense attorneys for the three defendants immediately filed an appeal, and the Supreme Court remanded the case back to the High Court on August 6. Tomorrow (September 22) marks the first trial date of the eleventh remand for the Chiou Ho-shun case. Four rescue organizations jointly issue this statement, calling upon the High Court to strictly adhere to the principle of the presumption of innocence and deliver a verdict of not guilty for this case involving insufficient evidence against Chiou Ho-shun.

According to the content of the 2009 Tai-Shang Character No. 4496 Criminal Judgment, the Supreme Court raised a total of five grounds for remanding the case for retrial. The first three grounds are procedural flaws, while the most critical are the final two: The fourth ground points out that "where evidence has been investigated but its content remains unclear, it is no different from uninvestigated evidence; if a judgment is abruptly rendered, it still constitutes failing to investigate evidence that should have been investigated during the trial date" (referring to a black plastic bag discovered during the investigation of the K'o-hung Yü-lan case); the fifth ground explains that a ransom note in the Lu Cheng murder case bore remaining fingerprints, but comparisons showed they completely mismatched any of the defendants in the case, yet past judgments all stated that "although it cannot be determined to whom the fingerprints belong, it is still difficult to rely on this alone to conclude that the defendants and others did not commit the crime."

The Chiou Ho-shun case has reached its eleventh remand, meaning the High Court is trying this case for the 12th time. The entire litigation has dragged on for 22 years, yet evidence and facts discovered at the very inception of the case remain unclarified—truly unbelievable. The reason the Chiou Ho-shun case has been tossed up and down between the High Court and the Supreme Court for 22 years without a final conclusion lies precisely in this: judges lack sufficient evidence and absolute conviction to finalize a sentence against the multiple defendants, yet for a case with insufficient evidence, judges are equally unwilling to return to the most fundamental principle of judicial trials: the presumption of innocence. Taiwan's judicial system should adopt appropriate measures to prevent cases with insufficient evidence from falling into the current state of endless remands without finality, thereby failing to grant the parties timely justice.

Furthermore, although the Supreme Court's remand judgment did not mention the defendants' defense of coerced confessions through torture, we must specifically raise it here. The police torture in the Chiou Ho-shun case is a matter of conclusive evidence, having previously been investigated and impeached by a Control Yuan Member (namely, current Minister of Justice Wang Ch'ing-feng). Yet the court merely excluded the confessions proven by recordings to be the result of torture, while adopting the remaining confessions from other investigative stages to conclude that all defendants were guilty. However, the contents of these confessions adopted by the court severely contradicted one another and conflicted with numerous pieces of evidence within the case, making their authenticity highly suspect. Yet to this day, dozens of judges who have tried this case have consistently ignored these severe flaws in the confessions, always evading them by "editing investigative records" in order to piece together a guilty verdict.

Because of the profound judicial flaws in this case and its involvement with the death penalty, it has drawn international attention. Amnesty International has just issued an international statement stating:

"Under relevant international standards for a fair trial, defendants shall be presumed innocent and be tried within a reasonable time."

"This twenty-year pending case should be resolved promptly."

On March 30 of this year, Taiwan officially ratified two of the most important international human rights covenants. Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights clearly stipulates that everyone is entitled to a fair trial. We once again publicly call upon the High Court to comply with international criminal human rights standards in its trials, and for a case suffering from insufficient evidence that has simultaneously set the record for the longest detention in our judicial history, it should swiftly conduct proceedings in accordance with the principle of the presumption of innocence to demonstrate Taiwan's judicial determination to pursue human rights protections. If Taiwanese courts once again follow old paths and habitual practices, they will continue to be the laughingstock of the international community.