JUSTICE SERVED?: The case, which has bounced between courts for two decades, has been panned for flaws including the submission of coerced confessions as evidence
By Celia Llopis-Jepsen
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Sep 23, 2009, Page 4
“Every time, I hope that this time the retrial will be different. All the lawyers involved in the case believe these people are innocent, otherwise they wouldn’t have gotten involved.”
— Stephen Lee, lawyer
The defendant sentenced to death 11 times in Taiwan’s longest ongoing criminal case has no hope that his newest retrial will be any different, his lawyer said yesterday on the opening day of the trial at the Taiwan High Court. “Chiou Ho-shun [邱和順] lost hope long ago,” lawyer Stephen Lee (李勝雄), who has represented Chiou at all 11 retrials, said in an interview.
This is the 12th time the Taipei branch of the Taiwan High Court hears the case, which has been roundly condemned by the Judicial Reform Foundation and strongly criticized by Amnesty International for a series of flaws — most notably the submission of coerced confessions as evidence and the lack of forensic evidence linking the defendants to the crimes.
JUDICIAL REFORM: A bill could put an end to the phenomenon of criminal cases bouncing between courts for years on end, but the legislation is still being drafted
By Loa Iok-sin
STAFF REPORTER
Taipei Times / Thursday, Aug 20, 2009, Page 4
Groups campaigning for judicial reform yesterday protested their exclusion from “public hearings” on a bill to ensure the right to a speedy trial.
Taiwan has a number of criminal cases that have bounced back and forth between the supreme and high courts for years. In one case, three former senior managers at a bank went through repeated trials for three decades before the verdict was finalized. The three were found innocent.
