Death penalty should be used with caution
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Is there no closure for a murder victim's family, except in the form of the execution of the killer? A family, surnamed Fan, was infuriated and demanded capital punishment last week when they heard that the killer of their 10-year-old boy was only handed
The Fan family’s indignation is understandable. The killing was committed in cold blood. The murderer, surnamed Tseng, picked the boy randomly in public, led him to a bathroom and slit his throat.
The only reason Tseng gave for killing the boy was that he wanted to be caught and jailed for life, so that he could enjoy free meals for the rest of his life.
Showing a bizarre shrewdness and no remorse at all, he was cited as saying that he had done research on the Internet about the death penalty in Taiwan before committing the crime. He was sure that in Taiwan, killing one to two people would not lead to the death penalty.
This side of the story seems to justify the family’s call for the death of Tseng.
But the Tainan District Court defended its relatively lenient verdict that practically granted Tseng’s wish.
The presiding judge of the trial argued that a psychiatric report determined that the defendant has a low IQ and has been suffering from depression and other forms of mental illness.
The judge also attributed his anti-social behaviour to his abnormal upbringing in a closed environment where he had little interaction with the outside world or proper parental guidance.
The judge said the court believes that Tseng should be given a second chance to receive re-education in prison, rather than be condemned to death.
The court’s reasoning seems justifiable, as punishment should not mean punishment alone. Theoretically and ideally, punishment should be meted out with the purpose or hope that the punished will learn from the lesson and correct his or her mistakes.
The death penalty is therefore an extreme form of punishment, the purpose of which is to get rid of the punished once and for all from society because he or she is “incurable”.
Human rights activists in Taiwan have been campaigning for the abolition of capital punishment, but various public opinion polls have shown that the majority of the populace does not agree with the activists, reasoning that this form of punishment still has a purpose to serve in Taiwan.
But that does not mean that the Taiwanese people support a tit-for-tat vengeance for all murderers where any killer must pay with his or her own life.
Taiwan used to have laws that stipulated the death penalty as the only punishment for certain crimes, such as kidnap-for-ransom cases where the kidnappers killed their hostages.
Taiwan now takes a much more cautious approach toward putting convicted murderers on death row. In one famous case – the “Hsichi Trio” – all justice ministers who had reviewed their case had consistently refused to sign the death warrant for the three death-row inmates for lack of substantial evidence. They have now been vindicated and released.
This case reinforced human rights activists’ argument that any wrongful execution can never be reversed. The activists have found more support from the wrongful execution of military serviceman Chiang Kuo-ching more than a decade ago over rape and murder charges. Chiang has been cleared of the charges posthumously, but that cannot bring him back to life.
But in the latest Fan family case, the dispute is centred much less on the possibility of a mistrial. It is the attitude of the judge that the family is challenging.
Judges in Taiwan now tend to look for signs of curability in the defendant in order to avoid pronouncing the death penalty.
The Fan family may be angry, but condemning a person to death is no easy decision that a judge should make lightly.
