Groups call for end to unfair trials, death penalty

Groups call for end to unfair trials, death penalty

Taipei,  (CNA) A report highlighting the issue of unfair trials that could lead to the death penalty was released by several rights groups Tuesday in Taipei, as part of efforts to reiterate their calls for the abolition of capital punishment. The report, jointly released by Amnesty International (AI), the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN) and the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty (TAEDP), detailed eight cases of people on death row in Asia and their struggles to secure a fair trial. Despite a trend toward abolishing capital punishment in Asia, 14 countries throughout the region still retain the death penalty, which carries with it the risk of miscarriage of justice and wrongful execution, said Louise Vischer, an ADPAN coordinator who spent a year compiling the report. The cases depicted in the report come from China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore and Taiwan. Six of the cases involve convictions that relied on confessions extracted through torture, including the case of Taiwanese death row inmate Chiu Ho-shun, who has been on trial for nearly 23 years on charges of abducting and murdering a school child in December 1987. In late July, the Supreme Court ended Chiu's lengthy trial by upholding his death sentence. Documented videos and recordings prove that Chiu was tortured by police during a four-month period of detention to extract confessions from him that were later presented in court as key evidence, according to lawyers familiar with the case. At a news conference to announce the release of the report, Vischer also touched on another high-profile case in Taiwan -- that of Chiang Kuo-ching, an Air Force serviceman who was wrongfully executed in 1997 for a murder he did not commit. "The death penalty is final and irreversible," she pointed out. Echoing Vischer's remarks, Catherine Baber, deputy director of AI's Asia-Pacific Program, said no judicial system is perfect enough to exclude all possibility of error. "If we are to take (action) against the execution of the innocent, the only solution is the abolition of the death penalty," Baber added. Asked about how Taiwan can avoid cases similar to those of Chiu and Chiang in the future, Vischer told CNA that judicial reform is the key. Judges have to be independent, free from the influence of public opinion and the hierarchy system, she said, adding that concrete material evidence is also required in any trial. "The material evidence was lacking in Chiu's case and it seems to be lacking in many other cases," Vischer said. Another issue that needs to be dealt with is coerced confessions, she went on. Although Taiwan has introduced a law to address that issue, more work is needed to deal with cases, such as Chiu's, that happened before the legislation, Vischer said. The Supreme Court has confirmed 15 death row convictions this year, bringing to 54 the number of people in Taiwan awaiting execution, the TAEDP said. Taiwan ended a more than four-year moratorium on executions with four carried out in April 2010 and another five in March this year, drawing criticism from the European Union and human rights advocates. (By Elaine Hou)

 Groups call for end to unfair trials, death penalty