The justice minister said it herself:
“It was I who decided to carry out the execution of Cheng Chieh ahead of other pending cases. This case damaged our society and made people fear for their personal safety in public places, so it had to be prioritized ahead of other cases. My colleagues in the justice ministry all supported this decision,” Luo said.Readers may recall that the poor sick lad killed 4 in the metro stabbing incident in 2014. The excellent Taiwan Law Blog was savage in its sarcasm:
......
Luo also said she was doing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) minister of justice-designate Chiu Tai-shan (邱太三) a favor by carrying out the execution.
“I know that quite a few DPP officials are in favor of abolishing capital punishment, so Chiu might have had difficulty deciding whether to carry out the order on this case. I took the decision, which is good for everyone concerned, and took the problem off Chiu’s hands,” Luo said.
As the Cabinet is scheduled to resign en mass on Wednesday, Luo will not have the opportunity to claim the title of female Minister of Justice with the most number of executions from Yeh Chin-fong, the only other woman to have held the position. Yeh executed 28 prisoners in her term during the last 15 months of Lee Teng-hui’s presidency.There's not much more you can say. Jenna of Laorencha put it best on Facebook: first society failed him, then it killed him.
Luo is doomed to be a follower. At least 3 of Yeh’s executions took place during Lee’s lame duck period between Chen Shui-bian’s electoral win in March 2000 and inauguration in May. In all likelihood, Luo will only manage to execute 1 during the current transition between Ma Ying-jeou and Tsai Ing-wen’s presidencies. Yeh was chosen as the judicial person of the year in 1999 by the Judicial Reform Foundation for being adamantly opposed to reforming the criminal justice system. It remains to be seen whether Luo will win this or other similar accolades for her extraordinary contribution to human rights discourse in Taiwan.
ADDED: New Bloom on the case.
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Daily Links:
- DON'T MISS: Letters from Taiwan on Taiwan's Object Impermanence
- DON'T MISS: the excellent Taiwan in Cycles on Bike Policy
- Gerrit van der Wees in The Diplomat on the WHA
- Is Obama going soft on Taiwan from J Bosco
- Exports drop 15 consecutive months
- A detailed discussion of the 1992 talks from the KMT news organ shows that China and Taiwan never had any consensus. President Lee also said no such thing ever happened.
- LOL. We already need to replace some ministers.
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God damn, the KMT are sure experts at summary executions!
ReplyDeleteLo and behold! Justice is finally done! The antichrist, bad handwriting, obviously spent too much time on the interweb, is crucified! A much needed living sacrifice for the society pebbled by endless reports of random acts of rage. 19 days post conviction and all the legal options are exhausted. This demonstrates our determination to uphold the rule of law without being bothered by the pesky thing called due process. But if you don't care for due process, you wouldn't care for legal precedence; so it evens out. Besides, our glorious media has already tried and found him guilty the day the incident happened, there's no room for debate, unlike the teleporting gunman. How dare the dinosaur judge let the teleporting gunman live, what about the hard works of the police to make him confess! While we are at it, let's stone the human right activists, too; they obviously care for murderers, not victims. All in all, let this send a clear message to all the psychopath copycat wannabes, if you want to get yourself executed by committing mass murder, you will get what you asked for, even if you renegade.
ReplyDeleteI'm not an unsympathetic person, but the statement of "First society failed the Metro killer, then it killed him" really seems to be trying to absolve him of personal blame and responsibility.
ReplyDeleteMinor quibble: the title of the article is "Is Obama Going Soft on Taiwan," not "Is Obama Going Soft on China."
ReplyDeleteI'm not an unsympathetic person, but the statement of "First society failed the Metro killer, then it killed him" really seems to be trying to absolve him of personal blame and responsibility.
ReplyDeleteYou can read it that way, if you want.
I believe that in cases like this the death penalty is the appropriate judicial punishment.
ReplyDeleteTherapy would have accomplished nothing so best thing really was that he was quickly executed.
After all, people claim he was a cancer on society. Well when you have cancer you go and remove it by killing it.