Sidelights｜Approaching the Death Penalty: Discussing the Constitutional Court's Oral Argument on "Whether the Death Penalty is Unconstitutional"

On April 23, 2024, the Constitutional Court held a public oral argument regarding the petition filed by Wang Hsin-fu and 37 other death row inmates challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty. The 37 death row inmates argued that the death penalty violates the right to life and human dignity guaranteed by the Constitution, and that capital punishment and its related sentencing procedures violate the principle of proportionality and due process. The Central Taiwan Office of the JRF invited Attorney Ts'ai Meng-han to deliver a lecture. This lecture introduced the current legal status of the death penalty in Taiwan and outlined the arguments presented by both sides during the Constitutional Court hearing for everyone's understanding.

The Constitutional Court has since issued its ruling on September 20, holding that the death penalty is constitutional in part but narrowing its scope of application. The Grand Justices explicitly stated that while the right to life is undoubtedly important, it is not an absolute and inviolable right. For acts of intentional homicide, the state still finds the existence of the death penalty necessary based on the culpability principle of retributive justice in order to protect people's legal interests in life and to stabilize social order. However, considering that the death penalty is an extreme punishment that deprives a defendant of life and is irreversible once executed following a judicial miscarriage, it must be applied prudently under strict standards. For example, the application of the death penalty must be limited to crimes of the most serious nature; panel judgments across all court instances must achieve a unanimous decision for the death penalty; and defendants suffering from mental disorders or other intellectual disabilities at the time of the offense and trial shall not be sentenced to death...

Attorney Ts'ai Meng-han expressed that his main reason for opposing the death penalty lies in "the meaning of the death penalty to the victims' families." Following the Taipei MRT random stabbing incident in Taiwan in 2014, there was a period when people were afraid to ride the MRT or other mass transit systems. Imagine if robbery and murder cases happen within your living circle; even if the perpetrator has been arrested, do you still feel uneasy? Compared to civil law, the public character of criminal law is much stronger. We are all joint participants in maintaining social order. If one person violates the order, it results in an infringement upon the overall public order. From the perspective of criminal law, everyone is a victim.

For Attorney Ts'ai Meng-han, the only meaning the death penalty might hold is so-called "restorative justice," serving as a form of compensation for the victims' families. The families' trust in the judiciary is manifested in their expectation that the state will impose a corresponding punishment on the offender. But what if a loophole appears in a certain social mechanism, leading to tragedy—can the state solve the problem simply by "carrying out an execution"? This almost becomes a means for the state to evade responsibility. American neuroscientist James Fallon once conducted related research, which proved that the causes of criminal behavior have a high statistical correlation with childhood abuse. The occurrence of crime is the culmination of life development, potentially stemming from bad childhood memories, life experiences during adolescence, or even a sudden outburst under immense pressure... Any trivial daily matter can become a criminal's motive for murder.

This is precisely the primary task the state should handle: examining the motives for crime at the source. Within this social system, have problems arisen in the family environment, the educational system, or social welfare? Rather than having the public expect the state to act heroically to deprive a person of life while failing to consider whether there were prior opportunities to prevent the crime from happening and to stop the infringement upon public interest—after all, once a criminal is executed, alongside their life, their upbringing background and criminal motives also vanish together. Preventing or improving the occurrence of crime means caring for the social and psychological development of the people. It is hoped that the state can strengthen the retrospective analysis of the causes of crime, improve the overall social environment, build a more robust social safety net, and fundamentally resolve the problem of crime.