Six convicts executed in Taiwan
2015/06/05 22:21:35
Taipei Detention Center, where three of the six death row inmates are executed.
Taipei, June 5 (CNA) Six convicts who killed a combined nine people in cold blood were executed on Friday, the Ministry of Justice confirmed.
Justice Minister Lo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪) signed the execution orders on Thursday for the six death row inmates put to death on Friday, the ministry said.
Three of the inmates were being held in Taipei prison and the others were incarcerated in Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung prisons.
It was the second time Lo approved the execution of death row convicts since she assumed her post in September 2013. She last signed an execution order in April 2014.
The ministry defended the executions by saying that more than 80 percent of people in Taiwan are in favor of maintaining the death penalty.
Before the public has reached a consensus and the law in Taiwan is revised to abolish the death penalty, the ministry will continue to enforce the law in the most cautious manner, it said, arguing that there was no reason for blocking the executions.
Deputy Justice Minister Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) said consideration of executing the six started in mid-May when the ministry reviewed the situations of all 48 inmates on death row in Taiwan to see if there were still judicial remedies that applied to them.
The number was cut to 25 after the review, and six were selected based on the severity and brutality of their crimes.
Three of the six death inmates -- Cheng Chin-wen (鄭金文), Huang Chu-wan (黃主旺) and Wang Hsiu-fang (王秀昉) -- made extraordinary appeals for stays of execution, but they were rejected by the Supreme Prosecutors Office.
Chen also said that "none of the six" donated their organs after being put to death.
He acknowledged that the medical establishment and human rights groups still had misgivings about organ donations by death row inmates.
"This was why the ministry has adopted a conservative attitude over the past one or two years and no longer surveyed death row inmates (on their willingness to donate organs)," he said.
Asked if the executions were expedited after the murder of a second-grader by a random attacker at a Taipei elementary school last week, Chen said that "this was not necessarily the case."
The six men executed included Huang Chu-wan, who was convicted for strangling his victim and burying him alive due to election disputes.
There were also Wang Hsiu-fang, who killed a woman and her three-year daughter in an argument and dumped their bodies, and Cheng Chin-wen, who killed two people because he couldn't repay the NT$500,000 debt owed to one of them.
The other three were Wang Yu-lung (王裕隆), who killed his former girlfriend and her friend, Wang Chun-chin (王俊欽), who robbed taxi drivers, sexually assaulted several female taxi drivers and killed one of them, and Tsao Tian-shou (曹添壽), a taxi driver who sexually assaulted a junior high school student and later killed her and dumped her body in a remote area.
After the executions, there are still 42 inmates on death row in Taiwan.
A civic group supporting the abolishment of capital punishment went to the Ministry of Justice on Friday to protest the executions.
Led by Lin Hsin-yi (林欣怡), chief executive officer of the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty (廢死聯盟), around 30 members raised small white posters emblazoned with the words "find the cause of the crime to fix the illness," and "face the illness together."
They criticized the ministry for "executing the death penalty randomly" to respond to the public outcry over a series of tragedies.
But several people supporting capital punishment were also on hand to confront the alliance members and throw eggs at the protesters, but were stopped by the intervention of police.
(By S.Y.Liu and Lilian Wu)
