Sidelights | President Lai, What You Truly Should Care About on International Day in Support of Victims of Torture: Questioning Where the State's Responsibility Lies Through the Cases of Chiou Ho-shun and Su Chien-ho

Ahead of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture on June 26, the Judicial Reform Foundation hosted a seminar on June 24 focusing on the Su Chien-ho and Chiou Ho-shun cases, exploring "the state's responsibility in preventing and eliminating torture." Both the Control Yuan and the courts have recognized that torture and cruel, inhuman treatment occurred in these two cases; however, each continues to face unresolved issues: While Su's criminal case resulted in a final acquittal in 2012, his civil compensation litigation is still ongoing; Chiu is currently 66 years old and has been imprisoned for 38 years, making his case one of the longest-standing death row cases globally.

The Su Chien-ho Case: After Exoneration, "Chronic Torture" Continues Unabated

Speaker: Attorney Lai Qiuhui (Pro Bono Attorney for the Su Chien-ho Case) | "The 35-Year Unfinished Road: The Su Chien-ho Case"

Entitled "The 35-Year Unfinished Road: The Su Chien-ho Case," the speaker explained that although this case has been exonerated, the related litigation has dragged on for 35 years since the accusations were first made in 1991, and has yet to come to a close.

Facts of the Case and Torture Methods

The case originated from the 1991 double murder of Wu Min-han and Yeh Ying-lan in Hsichih, where the two victims sustained a total of 79 stab wounds. Because the investigators intuitively concluded that a single person could not inflict so many wounds, they investigated under the premise of "multiple perpetrators." Following footprints, the police first located neighbor Wang Wen-hsiao, who initially confessed to acting alone. Under interrogation pressure, however, he incriminated his younger brother, Wang Wenzhong, who in turn named Su Chien-ho and two other classmates (all three were only 19–20 years old at the time). Yet, lacking direct physical evidence, the police promptly announced the solution of the case on August 15 of that same year.

During the 22-hour interrogation, Su Chien-ho was subjected to torture methods deliberately chosen to avoid leaving external injuries, including beatings, burning his chin with a cigarette lighter, electrocuting his genitals, waterboarding, and ice torture. Upon entering the detention center, Su's health check record clearly noted injuries such as swelling on his left hand, bruising on his left knee, and swelling on his right hand. However, the interrogation sessions were not audio- and video-recorded in their entirety, allowing the evasion of related accountability.

Attorney Lai further pointed out that to achieve the objective of solving the case, the police repeatedly cross-compared methods to align the confessions of the five individuals, "piecing together" the narrative of accomplices.

Appraisal and Exoneration

During the retrial stage, Dr. Henry Lee conducted an appraisal via crime scene reconstruction. Synthesizing factors such as spatial dimensions, wound patterns, bloodstains, and the body types of the involved individuals, he concluded that the crime scene was narrow, the incident occurred in the early morning hours with extremely low visibility, and it was highly improbable that multiple people committed the murder simultaneously. He assessed that the likelihood of a single perpetrator (Wang Wen-hsiao) was much higher. This appraisal result became one of the key grounds for the three defendants' final acquittal in 2012.

Core Controversy: The Gap Between Criminal and Civil Proceedings

The Su case drove major amendments to Taiwan's Code of Criminal Procedure, including Article 100-1 mandating that interrogations be audio- and video-recorded throughout, the prohibition of nighttime interrogations, the exclusion of illegally obtained evidence, and the requirement that the prosecution bear the burden of proof regarding the voluntariness of confessions. Nevertheless, the speaker warned that this principle of prohibiting torture "currently appears to exist only in criminal cases."

In civil litigation, confessions obtained through torture somehow "came back to life." The Supreme Court has remanded the case unfavorably twice: The first time (108 Tai-Shang No. 1437) held that the original trial court confused the burden of proof between criminal and civil matters, while questioning the insufficiency of Su's evidence, the inconsistency between the timing of admitting to the crime and the rules of empirical logic, and the discrepancy between the injuries and detention center records; the second time (114 Tai-Shang No. 488) put forth the inference that "consistent statements mean the criminal facts occurred, whereas inconsistent statements represent statements made of free will."

The speaker criticized this reasoning for containing logical contradictions and argued that the Supreme Court is still substantively utilizing evidence obtained through torture. The speaker further analyzed that the core of the problem lies in the Code of Civil Procedure's failure to explicitly exclude torture-tainted evidence, the allocation of the burden of proof, and the disparity in the standard of proof (civil proceedings adopt the "preponderance of the evidence" standard, which is lower than the criminal threshold of "beyond a reasonable doubt"). Finally, the speaker questioned the fairness of demanding, 35 years later, that torture victims bear the burden of proving they "were not tortured," noting that the courts could have adjusted the burden of proof based on "manifest unfairness" but failed to do so.

Conclusion: Victims of the Judiciary

"In an avalanche, no snowflake ever feels responsible." — The Judge's Victims

Quoting a famous line from the book The Judge's Victims, the speaker pointed out that responsibility in the Su case rests with everyone from the police and prosecutors to the judges. Drawing a contrast between "victims of the case" and "victims of the judiciary," she argued that endlessly debating whether torture confessions can be admitted in civil proceedings even after exoneration amounts to "chronic torture outside the interrogation room" for the parties involved, and she called on society to maintain its attention.

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The Chiou Ho-shun Case: 38 Years of Wrongful Imprisonment, Torture Confessions, and the "Missing Perpetrator"

Speaker: Attorney Lin Hongwen (Pro Bono Attorney for the Chiou Ho-shun Case) | "Prohibit Torture, End Wrongful Imprisonment—Examining Taiwan's Human Rights Report Card Through the Chiou Ho-shun Case"

Attorney Lin Hongwen, who has handled this case for over 20 years, pointed out that Chiou Ho-shun was detained for 23 years before his conviction became final, and has spent over 15 years on death row following final conviction, totaling nearly 38 years in custody—making him one of the longest-detained defendants due to a miscarriage of justice in Taiwan.

Two Murder Cases Convicted Based on Accomplice Confessions

The speaker explained that Chiou Ho-shun was accused of involvement in the 1987 "Ko Hung Yu-lan Murder Case" and the "Lu Cheng Kidnapping and Extortion Case." Ko Hung Yu-lan was a female insurance agent whose headless, limbological torso was found in a marshland in November of that same year. Plastic bags were left at the body dumping site containing the victim's shoes, a butchering knife, a small palm knife, a specialized injection syringe, and white men's briefs. Lu Cheng was an elementary school student who was kidnapped in front of his cram school. The perpetrators made about 13 extortion calls and, after retrieving a ransom of 1 million NT dollars following instructions left on a slip of paper along the highway, still murdered him and tore up the body; his remains have never been found.

The speaker noted that after undergoing 25 trials, the case resulted in a final death sentence for Chiou Ho-shun in 2011, while several other accomplices received sentences ranging from over a decade to more due to factors such as their juvenile status. He questioned why extortion, as a sophisticated crime, "would require mobilizing over a dozen people to kidnap a child," which in itself defies common sense. Furthermore, the entire case was able to secure a conviction despite thin physical evidence for "only one reason: the courts adopted the confessions of accomplices."

At the seminar, the speaker played an audio recording of the interrogation of a 14-year-old juvenile involved in the same case as Chiu, in which police abuse and intimidation can be heard. Another video recording from October 9, 1988, showed a defendant being interrogated in near-winter weather wearing only a jacket on his upper body and men's briefs on his lower body. He directly asserted that this was done to facilitate torture methods such as electric shocks, water-pouring, and ice, stating, "Beaten to that state, you had no choice but to confess."

He criticized the court for handling the torture controversy by "severing the transcripts"—in the trials of both cases, the court only excluded the portions of the audio tapes with obvious torture, prohibiting them from being used as evidence, while still using the contents of other defendants' transcripts as evidence. This clearly violated the legal rule that the prosecution bears the burden of proving the absence of torture. The speaker also revealed that a presiding judge once stated in court, "I hope I am the last victim of this case," reflecting the judiciary's tendency to "rush for a final conviction" to evade correcting errors when faced with the immense peer pressure tied to the case's 25 trials.

Multiple Physical Evidence Contradictions and Alibis

The speaker systematically listed the doubtful points in the judgment: Appraisal determined that the murder weapon in the Ko case was a specialized butchering knife, which did not match the seized machete; 7 fingerprints found on the extortion envelope completely failed to match those of Chiou Ho-shun and the 13 other defendants, yet the court concluded that the defendants "intentionally left none"; in the crucial voiceprint comparison, the scientific "voiceprint spectrogram comparison method" results did not match, but the appraisal instead relied on the non-standard "listening method," and the proportion of "sounding similar" in the 130-word recording was less than ten percent; when the defense team requested a re-appraisal, the critical master audio tape had already gone missing, and the court still relied on the original appraisal result for conviction under the rationale that "the disadvantage of loss cannot be attributed to the victim [prosecution]."

In addition, the defendants' confessions contradicted objective facts in multiple places: They claimed Lu Cheng's family was wealthy because "someone drove him to and fro," but Lu Cheng's father testified that his child took the bus to school; there were as many as 8 different versions of the location of Lu Cheng's remains; the method and time of Ko Hung Yu-lan's abduction contradicted the testimony of multiple eyewitness relatives; when the first extortion call of the case was placed, Chiou Ho-shun was in Miaoli processing a car rental and acting as a guarantor, providing a clear alibi that the court nonetheless dismissed through unsubstantiated speculation that "the documents might have been retroactively signed." Critical physical evidence available for testing at the Ko case scene also "all vanished" when subsequently inquired about.

Torture, International Attention, and the "Scapegoat"

The speaker emphasized that Chiou Ho-shun's 4 years of solitary confinement, wearing leg irons for as long as 18 years, and living in daily fear of execution for the 15 years following his final conviction all constitute torture. The Control Yuan had previously impeached the handling police officers and prosecutors for this; although some police officers received final criminal convictions for torture, they fled to mainland China prior to execution of their sentences, and ultimately no one served prison time. The defense team has thus far filed 5 retrials, 4 extraordinary appeals, and 3 constitutional interpretation petitions, yet the case remains unexonerated. Amnesty International and other organizations mobilized over 20,000 to 30,000 letters of support, and the 2013 International Review of the Two Covenants and the 2019 Asian Simulated Tribunal both determined that the case violated human rights covenants.

"If everyone stops paying attention, to the government, he may simply become a statistic of execution."

Finally, the speaker concluded by pointing out that the biggest difference between this case and other successfully exonerated cases is that "the true perpetrator has still not been found," making exoneration exceptionally difficult. He believes Chiu is a "scapegoat of a malfunctioning judicial system" and called on society to maintain ongoing attention.

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Torture Will Not Leave the Judicial System on Its Own: Anti-Torture is Not a Policy Option but an Absolute Obligation—Starting from the Two Covenants

Speaker: Huang Yi-pi (Executive Director, Covenants Watch)

The Past and Present of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

June 26 is often referred to simply as "International Anti-Torture Day," but its true name is actually not "Anti-Torture Day"; rather, it is a call for everyone to stand up and support survivors who have suffered torture. Thus, its proper name is the "International Day in Support of Victims of Torture."

Why is it set on June 26? The primary reason is that the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment was adopted in 1984 and entered into force on June 26, 1987. A decade later, in 1997, June 26 was designated annually as the Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

In the Su Chien-ho case, alongside Su Chien-ho were Liu Bing-lang, Chuang Lin-xun, and even Wang Wenzhong (the younger brother of Wang Wen-hsiao)—they are all bona fide victims. Not to mention them personally, their families have also suffered all kinds of torment over the past decades. Of course, the case that has drawn the greatest international attention is also the Chiou Ho-shun case. Therefore, we should look back from the perspective of international human rights law on how to handle these two prominent miscarriage-of-justice cases in Taiwan, and how to prevent such miscarriages from happening again.

The Definition of Torture Itself

Foreword

When discussing torture today, from the perspective of international human rights law, it is positioned as the most severe and egregious human rights violation. Therefore, the principle that "no one shall be subjected to torture" falls under the category of "absolute rights" subject to "absolute prohibition" within the classification of freedom and rights in international human rights law. This means the state cannot put forth any justificatory reason—such as pursuing a so-called public interest objective—to inflict torture on anyone. For example: If someone plants a time bomb that threatens to harm the lives and property of many people, even if you capture the suspect, you cannot subject them to torture to extract information in order to save potential victims. Because the right "not to be subjected to torture or ill-treatment" is an absolute right of every individual, the state cannot justify it under any circumstances.

As Attorney Lin mentioned, Professor Manfred Nowak is one of the world's most renowned international experts on civil and political rights, and a former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. He wrote in a media interview and in his book:

"Torture is the most severe human rights violation. Among all human rights violations, the only one that compares to it is slavery. Slavery legally transforms a human being into a 'thing,' entirely belonging to a master and stripping them of free will. Torture, on the other hand, strips a person of their human dignity through acts of infliction, making them feel they are no longer human."

Therefore, once torture occurs and society remains indifferent, all of us—you and I—will become victims, and we will also become perpetrators.

Here are words written by a UN Special Rapporteur whom I deeply admire, penned in 2018 on the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

"Torture is the perpetrator, robbing the victim of their humanity, while the perpetrator themselves is someone devoid of humanity. If a society knowingly tolerates the existence of torture, that society is likewise devoid of humanity."

This is why we must pay attention to these significant individual cases and the ongoing occurrence of torture. More importantly, we must figure out how to build a system where Taiwan is truly free of torture.

Narrow and Broad Definitions

What exactly is torture? Sometimes we speak of "torture in the narrow sense," but more often in international human rights law, torture is a very broad shorthand. In Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which discusses the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, the Covenant addresses torture and other treatment separately; however, with the advent of the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the differences between the two were delineated in greater detail.

The primary reason is that while both constitute absolutely prohibited human rights violations, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment specifically advocates for penalizing perpetrators of torture through criminal offenses. Among all unlawful acts, prosecution via criminal penalties indicates that the act carries the highest moral culpability and is least tolerated by society.

However, cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment may not necessarily require criminal penalties for the perpetrator, as the actor's malice may sometimes be less severe or unintentional. By contrast, the fundamental malevolence of torture is entirely distinct. Within the framework of UN human rights law, there is a very strict threshold for what constitutes torture. Although compared to 100 years ago—when actions considered commonplace back then might not have amounted to much—human civilization has progressed, and actions once not regarded as serious problems may well constitute torture today.

When defining torture, we adopt a more rigorous and stringent definition. We cannot judge solely by the pattern of the behavior; rather, we must comprehensively weigh various elements of the act's occurrence. For example: Slapping someone or tying someone to a bed does not necessarily constitute torture; one must consider the perpetrator's motive, intent, desired objective, and the power dynamic between the perpetrator and the victim. In addition, whether the perpetrator holds official status and whether the act was acquiesced or instigated by the state must also be factored in.

Power Dynamics Causing a Sense of Helplessness in Specific Contexts

According to some international human rights law scholars, while traditional definitions hold that torture necessarily triggers intense physical and psychological pain, what is now more crucial is the power dynamic between the perpetrator and the victim, as well as the victim's sense of helplessness in a specific context.

The biggest distinction between torture and other forms of ill-treatment is that groups subjected to other forms of ill-treatment may experience a less severe sense of helplessness, and the perpetrator's malice in the latter case is lower and not entirely intentional, thereby yielding a different adverse outcome.

Impact on Individual Cases Under Adverse Outcomes

In some cases, evidence obtained through torture is treated as "dossier material." Although such evidence may be excluded under evidentiary rules in criminal trials—even leading to an acquittal—its effects may still persist in other proceedings. For example, in Su Chien-ho's case, despite ultimately securing an acquittal, the impact of the torture-tainted evidence remained.

Some of these torture cases have been certified by international organizations such as the United Nations. For instance, in the Chiou Ho-shun case, a UN Special Rapporteur determined that he was subjected to torture and that the conviction evidence originated from torture, in violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. However, due to the "One China" principle, the United Nations sent inquiries to China, to which China did not respond.

A recent positive development is the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel pollution case in Vietnam. This case involved a steel plant jointly invested in by the Vietnamese government, Formosa Plastics, and China Steel, alongside protests by Vietnamese citizens and heavy prison sentences handed down to dissidents. In this case, the Special Rapporteur wrote not only to China but also to the Vietnamese government and Formosa Plastics, while making reference to the Taiwanese authorities.

The effects of torture have continuity; once a person is beaten, it generates psychological fear. Even if they are not tortured again, they will confess out of the anticipation of reprisal. This psychological intimidation renders a confession lacking in voluntariness. Therefore, once torture occurs, all related evidence should be deemed invalid. Yet, the current Code of Criminal Procedure fails to comprehensively address this.

Does the Death Penalty as a Punishment Itself Constitute a Form of Torture?

The prevailing consensus in current international human rights law holds that while the death penalty may not necessarily constitute torture, it undeniably constitutes a cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, placing it firmly within the absolute untouchable category. The speaker further explained that past understandings of torture tended to focus on physical pain, but in the context of the death penalty, the "death row phenomenon" is even more likely to constitute a form of psychological torture. Death row inmates often have to endure prolonged, uncertain waiting between the finalization of their judgment and its execution, while simultaneously bearing the pressures of detention environments and the mental torment of living under the long shadow of death. This continuous psychological oppression may even further impair their cognitive and information-processing abilities, creating gaps and distortions in their understanding of reality.

Under the international review mechanisms of the Two Covenants, international experts have successively put forward multiple recommendations to Taiwan since 2013. These include demanding consideration of sentence reductions or pardons for specific cases such as Chiou Ho-shun, and explicitly pointing out that Taiwan should move toward abolishing the death penalty, or at least suspending executions. At the same time, the death penalty should not be executed against vulnerable groups such as persons with psychosocial disabilities, and the enactment of a specific "Torture Crime" is recommended, imposing a prison sentence of at least six years on those who commit torture. Furthermore, the state should actively intervene in any cases potentially involving torture and establish preventive mechanisms beforehand to reduce the likelihood of torture occurring.

What Obligations Does the State Face Regarding Torture?

The speaker categorized the state's obligations in preventing torture into several main dimensions: First is the absolute prohibition of torture; second is preventing the occurrence of torture through institutional design, education and training, monitoring, and safeguard mechanisms; third is launching investigations and prosecutions upon reasonable suspicion; fourth is implementing the exclusionary rule of evidence across various proceedings so that evidence obtained through torture is inadmissible, with the sole exception that such evidence may be used to prove the existence of the torture itself; fifth is providing victims with remedies such as compensation, rehabilitation, and restoration of reputation; and sixth is reforming interrogation cultures and evidentiary systems from an institutional standpoint to reduce the risk of recidivism.

Additionally, the speaker shared new directions in the theory and practice of torture prevention, which include pursuing criminal liability for torture perpetrators through the explicit codification of a "Torture Crime" offense in Taiwan. It is also emphasized that interrogation methods should shift from traditional "interrogation-for-confession" to the more human-rights-oriented "investigative interviewing." Institutionally, a National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) can be established to conduct unannounced visits and oversight of all places potentially involving the deprivation of personal liberty. The focus of this mechanism is not ex post accountability, but the systematic prevention of human rights violations.

Overall, to truly deprive torture of room to exist, alongside the aforementioned state obligations and institutional designs, Taiwan should also promote the domestic incorporation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) and its Optional Protocol (OPCAT), and establish investigative mechanisms independent of the police and prosecution systems to avoid the conflicts of interest arising from simultaneously acting as both enforcer and supervisor.