Last updated: August 2011
The Case of Chiou Ho-shun (邱和順)
Confession of an accused not extracted by violence,
threat, inducement, fraud, exhausting interrogation, unlawful detention or
other improper means … may be admitted as evidence.
~Code
of Criminal Procedure, Article 156
Significance: Taiwan’s
longest-running criminal case: The defendant is faced with execution after 24
years in custody and 12 trials.
Summary:
Chiou (along with 11 codefendants) was arrested in 1988 and held
incommunicado for four months. During these months he was repeatedly interrogated
and confessed, a confession he later retracted claiming that he was tortured. In
1993, a Control Yuan investigation unearthed tapes of interrogation sessions,
and concluded that police had used torture. A number of police officers were
impeached, and later convicted by criminal court. Despite this and lack of
material evidence, the case dragged on for another 18 years until now.
Details: On Dec. 21, 1987, a nine-year-old boy named Lu Cheng disappeared in
Hsinchu while walking home from school. Lu’s family began receiving calls from
the kidnapper the same day. They negotiated and paid
a ransom, but their son was never recovered.
Nine months later,
police received a tip from an informant, apparently offered to secure reward
money. Based on that tip,12 people were arrested,
Chiou among them.
Police held the
defendants incommunicado for four months, during which time they were subjected to torture and confessed to kidnapping and killing Lu.
They also confessed to another unsolved crime that occurred in November 1987,
the murder and dismemberment of a female insurance agent, Ko Hung Yu-lan.
Prosecutors combined the cases and charged
the defendants with both murders. The defendants then retracted their confessions
and said they had been tortured.
In the 1990s, an investigation by the
Control Yuan uncovered taped interrogation sessions that confirmed the
defendants’ claims of torture. The police involved were impeached and later
convicted in criminal court.
The defendants’ confessions were not
excluded as court evidence, however. Instead, only those sections of the tapes
with clear evidence of torture were excluded.
In
2003, police revealed that Hu Kuan-pao, a death row inmate sentenced for a
series of kidnappings, confessed to the Lu murder just before his execution.
His claim was not investigated.
Material evidence: Fingerprints were
found on a note from Lu’s kidnapper, but these did not
match the defendants and were never identified. Lu’s body was never found and
only parts of Ko Hung’s body were found. No murder weapons were found in either
murder. The police seized a bag, rope and knife from Chiou’s home and said
these had been used in the crimes, but no forensic tests linked them to either
murder.
The kidnapper’s voice in the Lu case was
recorded over the phone, and the prosecution said this voice matched one of the
defendants, yet the recording was never produced in court and its whereabouts
are unknown. The prosecution submitted only select excerpts of a graphic voice
analysis. The method of this analysis and the technology used did not comply
with the Ministry of Justice’s procedures for voice analysis. Moreover, when
the defense asked to see the complete analysis, prosecutors said they no longer
have it and that only nine photocopies of excerpts remain, along with two
reports on the analysis.
Current status
of the case: Of the original 12 defendants, only Chiou and two
others ( Lin Kun-ming and Wu Shu—zhen) were still undergoing trials and appeals
as of August 2011. Of these, Chiou is the only one who
is faced with the death
penalty. On May 12, their 11th trial at the High Court, Lin was sentenced to
17 years and Wu to 10. Chiou, again, was sentenced to death. Their appeal to
the Supreme Court, the court of final appeal, was rejected on July 28. Also rejected was an application
for extraordinary appeal by the Attorney General. The defense attorneys have
also applied to the High Court for a retrial. The prospect of a retrial is widely regarded as
unpromising.
(Of the other nine, one passed away in prison and
another eight who were sentenced to between 10 and 16 years, and eventually
dropped their appeals. On the forms to waive their appeals, they maintained
their innocence and said they were giving up only to avoid wasting more years
in detention.)
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