Since 2000, the government has professed a policy of gradually abolishing the death penalty. In 2009, it further ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and adopted them as domestic laws. Taiwan’s policy of gradual abolition followed the spirit of ICCPR Article 6. From 2006 to 2009, the country did not carry out any executions.
Lawmakers and rights groups yesterday called for a retrial or an extraordinary appeal for death row inmate Cheng Hsin-tze (鄭性澤), who was convicted of murdering a police officer in a case activists called “an obvious miscarriage of justice.”