To Live! To Die? A Confusing and Botched Death Penalty Warrant!

Chung Te-shu, the first death-row inmate in 2006 to have a death warrant signed by the Minister of Justice, entered the Puzu Police Station of the Taoyuan Precinct of the Taoyuan County Police Department at around noon on April 2, 2001, to ask police officers how he could secure and enforce his claim against a debtor. After being told by the officers that it would be difficult to assert the claim without supporting documentation, he became utterly despondent. He subsequently purchased gasoline and went to a children's mental-arithmetic class where the debtor, who was one of the victims, was located. The resulting fire killed three people and injured eighteen others. He was ultimately sentenced to death, and the judgment became final. The Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty hopes to use these facts, as established by the court's judgment, to call on the public to consider the following question: What kind of person who is truly so heinous and dangerous that he must be permanently isolated from society would go to the police before committing the crime? If there was no such reason, does this not suggest that, in fact, Chung Te-shu's crime was not deserving of the death penalty and that there remained a possibility of rehabilitating his behavior? And why did the courts never consider this point? What went wrong with the courts' sentencing?

On December 1, 2006, Minister of Justice Morley Shih signed the first death warrant of 2006, taking the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty by surprise. The Alliance was therefore forced to urgently meet with the Ministry of Justice on December 4 to question the legitimacy of the death warrant. In the end, the execution was temporarily stayed.

What puzzled the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty was that the Ministry of Justice had long publicly supported the gradual abolition of the death penalty and had repeatedly pledged to handle death penalty cases with the utmost caution. Moreover, on November 8, the Ministry had even responded to a foreign human rights organization, Amnesty International (AI), stating that it was willing to make every effort to maintain a zero-execution record for the year. Yet, on December 1, it nevertheless signed a death warrant. The reasons behind this apparent contradiction remain unclear and will have to await an explanation from the Ministry of Justice.

In fact, after President Chen Shui-bian took office in 2000, he declared his intention to establish Taiwan as a country founded on human rights and to gradually abolish the death penalty. The late former Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan went even further, announcing in 2001 that he intended to abolish the death penalty within three years. These declarations by the ruling party gave international human rights organizations high hopes that Taiwan could become the first country in Northeast Asia to abolish the death penalty. Accordingly, when the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) visited Taiwan in September 2005 to conduct research for a report on the death penalty and met with the Ministry of Justice, it presented the Ministry with a number of recommendations aimed at advancing the abolition of the death penalty. Among these was a recommendation that different attorneys be allowed to independently review the case files of death penalty cases. At the time, the Ministry of Justice generously agreed to allow volunteer attorneys from the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty to re-examine the cases of death-row inmates whose convictions and death sentences had become final, in order to determine whether there were grounds for extraordinary legal remedies. If the volunteer attorneys were formally retained by a death-row inmate, they would also be permitted to review the case records anew. This policy greatly encouraged and delighted members of the Alliance.

However, when the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty’s legal defense team for death-row prisoners began negotiating with the Supreme Court’s Procuracy and the Ministry of Justice over access to case files in March 2006, it encountered numerous obstacles. Although the Ministry of Justice paid lip service to the issue, it failed to take effective action. The court-appointed lawyers retained by the death-row prisoners first applied to the Supreme Court’s Procuracy for access to the case files. The Supreme Court’s Procuracy replied that the case records had already been sent to the Ministry of Justice and that the lawyers therefore had to apply to the Ministry to review the files. However, when the lawyers applied to the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry said that, pursuant to the Guidelines on Lawyers’ Access to Case Files at Prosecutorial Authorities, they had to submit their applications to a “prosecutorial authority.” After its efforts with both agencies proved unsuccessful, the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty made several further verbal representations to the Ministry of Justice, but the matter still remained unresolved. On September 18, the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty formally wrote to the Ministry of Justice, requesting its assistance in arranging access to the case files for defense lawyers representing death-row prisoners whose convictions had become final. The Ministry nevertheless replied that such requests had to be handled in accordance with the Guidelines on Lawyers’ Access to Case Files at Prosecutorial Authorities. On October 26, Wang Pao-li, the court-appointed defense lawyer for Chung Te-shu, applied to the Ministry of Justice for access to the case files. On November 3, the Ministry replied, instructing Attorney Wang to submit his application to a “prosecutorial authority” in accordance with the Guidelines on Lawyers’ Access to Case Files at Prosecutorial Authorities. Attorney Wang therefore turned to the Supreme Court’s Procuracy on November 8 and applied for access to the case files. On November 10, the Supreme Court’s Procuracy replied that the case file had been submitted to the Ministry of Justice for review and instructed Attorney Wang to contact the Ministry to arrange access to the file. Seeing that the two agencies were passing the responsibility back and forth and that the issue remained unresolved, the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty met with Political Vice Minister Lee Chin-yung on November 24. The Vice Minister finally agreed to coordinate the matter, after which requests for access to the case files would be handled uniformly through the Supreme Court’s Procuracy. After learning of the Ministry of Justice’s policy decision, Attorney Wang immediately submitted another application to the Supreme Court’s Procuracy for access to the case files. On November 28, the Supreme Court’s Procuracy finally stated that it was in the process of requesting the case file from the Ministry of Justice. Unexpectedly, just three days later, not only had the Supreme Court’s Procuracy failed to obtain the case file in the Chung Te-shu case, but the execution of the death sentence had also been approved by the Minister. Quite apart from whether the Ministry of Justice’s implementation of its policy of gradually abolishing the death penalty raises questions about its good faith, there was clearly a serious problem with procedural oversight. How could the Supreme Court’s Procuracy have formally requested the case file just three days earlier, while the Minister nevertheless approved the execution? The Ministry of Justice’s internal coordination had clearly broken down.

On December 4, the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty urgently met with the Ministry of Justice. The Taiwan High Court’s Procuracy also recognized the problem and consequently returned the case file to the Supreme Court’s Procuracy, enabling Attorney Wang to review it. As a result, Chung Te-shu became the first death-row prisoner in history to survive for three days after a death warrant had been issued, despite the fact that the prosecuting authority responsible for carrying out the execution had not discovered the circumstances stipulated in the proviso to Article 461 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

After the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty filed its second petition for constitutional interpretation, it reviewed its records of dealings with the Ministry of Justice over the preceding year and found that the Ministry had handled both the implementation of its policy of gradually abolishing the death penalty and the procedures for overseeing executions with extreme carelessness and in a highly disorderly manner. For example, the Ministry of Justice stated that every death penalty case would be reviewed by a prosecutor or a senior legal affairs officer to determine whether there were grounds for filing an extraordinary appeal or petitioning for a retrial. However, Chung Te-shu himself had twice petitioned the Prosecutor-General to file an extraordinary appeal, and the Prosecutor-General had rejected both requests. Moreover, even the grounds for an extraordinary appeal urgently submitted by Attorney Wang Pao-li after reviewing the case file were rejected by the Supreme Court’s Procuracy. It was therefore clear that the Ministry of Justice and the prosecutorial authorities were not moving in step with regard to the policy of abolishing the death penalty. Isn’t ensuring such coordination precisely the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice?

A death warrant shrouded in mystery and confusion has left Chung Te-shu hovering between life and death every day. Even the legal effect of a death warrant issued under Article 461 of the Code of Criminal Procedure when three days have passed without its execution remains a mystery. Chung Te-shu has already petitioned the Constitutional Court for a constitutional interpretation concerning the constitutionality of the death penalty. After exposing the Ministry of Justice’s repeated instances of carelessness and evasion, the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty still hopes that Minister Shih will withdraw the death warrant before the constitutional ruling is issued. It also hopes that the Prosecutor-General will file an extraordinary appeal on Chung Te-shu’s behalf, thereby giving genuine effect to the ruling party’s stated policy of abolishing the death penalty.