Taiwan: Another Six Executions

The Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN) joins the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty (TAEDP) in condemning the executions today of another six people in Taiwan.

Zeng Si-ru, Hung Ming-tsung, Huang Hsien –cheng, Chen Chin-huo, Kuang Te-chiang and Tai Te-ying were executed at different locations across Taiwan. Family members are not informed about executions in advance and find out only when they are invited to collect the body after the execution.

ADPAN regrets that since taking office in 2010, fifteen execution warrants have been signed by Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu. Four executions took place in 2010 and five last year.

The executions by shooting are the first in the country this year. 55 people are facing execution and have exhausted all appeals.

“The death penalty is the cheapest method but also the least effective in stopping crime, says Lin Hsinyi, Executive Director of the TAEDP. “If the government really wanted to put a stop to crime, it should not look to the death penalty as the cure. Instead, it should strive to solve crimes and mete out appropriate punishments”, Lin Hsinyi said.

Source: adpan, December 21, 2012

Taiwan: Broken promises as six executed

Taiwan’s execution of six people on Friday makes a mockery of the authorities’ stated commitment to abolish the death penalty, Amnesty International said.

Zeng Si-ru, Hung Ming-tsung, Huang Hsien –cheng, Chen Chin-huo, Kuang Te-chiang and Tai Te-ying were executed earlier today at different locations across Taiwan.

The executions by shooting are the first in the country this year. Five people were executed in 2011 and 55 people are awaiting execution and have exhausted all appeals.

"This is cold-blooded killing by the Taiwanese authorities. How can the government credibly claim it wants to see an end to the death penalty when it continues to conduct such actions?” said Roseann Rife, Head of East Asia at Amnesty International.

The authorities have repeatedly declared their intention to move away from using the death penalty and lead a public debate on the issue.

Deputy Justice Minister Chen Shou-huang said on 19 December that the authorities would carry out death sentences on its own schedule and will not be influenced by foreign experts.

Last month, Manfred Nowak, a former UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and Eibe Riedel, a member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, called on President Ma Ying-jeou urging that Taiwan implement a moratorium on executions.

This came ahead of their scheduled visit to Taiwan next year to review the government’s report on implementation of the two UN Human Rights Treaties – the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

"It is abhorrent to justify taking someone’s life because prisons are overcrowded or the public’s alleged support for the death penalty. The death penalty is never the right answer and must never be used, including as a tool for crime prevention, repression or any other policies,” said Rife.

“Instead of offering feeble excuses the authorities should deliver on their commitments to respect everyone's human rights, and move to end the use of the death penalty."

Taiwan provides no procedure that would allow people on death row to seek a pardon or for the sentence to be commuted – a right recognized by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the Taiwanese parliament has voted to implement.

Family members are not informed about scheduled executions in advance. They only find out when they are invited to collect the body from the mortuary.

In addition, serious fair trial concerns have marked the imposition of the death penalty in Taiwan.

In April, Taiwan's High Court quashed the convictions of three men sentenced to death over the murder of a couple 21 years ago, as it found that the convictions were based on unreliable confessions:

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender, or the method used by the state to carry out the execution.

Source: Amnesty International, December 21, 2012

Taiwan harvests organs from executed inmate: Media

TAIPEI (AFP) - A hospital in Taiwan harvested organs and other body parts from one of six executed death row inmates, in a controversial procedure that could help five patients, local media reported on Sunday.

Taiwanese authorities executed six death row prisoners on Friday, the largest number to be put to death in one day in recent years, amid an ongoing debate about the maintenance of capital punishment.

Three inmates had agreed to donate their organs but doctors only harvested material from one of them, the United Daily News said.

Chen Chin-huo, convicted of murdering a woman and cooking her flesh, had his liver, two kidneys, corneas and bone removed, the newspaper reported.

Source: The StraitsTimes, December 23, 2012

Florida executes Michael Tanzi

Florida on Tuesday executed a death row inmate described by one local detective as a "fledgling serial killer" for the murder of a beloved Miami Herald employee. Florida executed Michael Tanzi on Tuesday, 25 years after the murder of beloved Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta, who was attacked in broad daylight on her lunch break in 2000. Michael Tanzi, 48, was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford and pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET.

South Carolina | Man who ambushed off-duty cop to face firing squad in second execution of its kind

Mikal Mahdi, 48, who was found guilty of killing an off-duty police officer and a convenience store worker, is the second inmate scheduled to executed by South Carolina's new firing squad A murderer who ambushed and shot an off duty police officer eight times before burning his body in a killing spree is set to become the second person to die by firing squad. South Carolina's highest court has rejected the last major appeal from Mikal Mahdi, 41, who is to be put to death with three bullets to the heart at 6pm on April 11 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. Mahdi's lawyers said his original lawyers put on a shallow case trying to spare his life that didn't call on relatives, teachers or people who knew him and ignored the impact of weeks spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teen.

Lethal Injection, Electric Chair, or Firing Squad? An Inhumane Decision for Death Row Prisoners

South Carolina resumed executions with the firing squad killing of Brad Sigmon last month. Mikal Madhi’s execution date is days away. The curtain shrieked as it was yanked open to reveal a 67-year-old man tied to a chair. His arms were pulled uncomfortably behind his back. The red bull’s-eye target on his chest rose and fell as he desperately attempted to still his breathing. The man, Brad Sigmon, smiled at his attorney, Bo King, seated in the front row before guards placed a black bag over his head. King said Sigmon appeared to be trying his best to put on a brave face for those who had come to bear witness.

Afghanistan | Four men publicly executed by Taliban with relatives of victims shooting them 'six or seven times' at sport stadium

Four men have been publicly executed by the Taliban, with relatives of their victims shooting them several times in front of spectators at a sport stadium. Two men were shot around six to seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the centre of Afghanistan's Badghis province, witnesses told an AFP journalist in the city. The men had been 'sentenced to retaliatory punishment' for shooting other men, after their cases were 'examined very precisely and repeatedly', the statement said. 'The families of the victims were offered amnesty and peace but they refused.'

South Carolina executes Mikal Mahdi

Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers A man facing the death penalty for committing two murders was executed by firing squad on Friday, the second such execution in the US state of South Carolina this year. Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers, an off-duty police officer, and the murder of a convenience store employee three days earlier. According to a statement from the prison, "the execution was performed by a three-person firing squad at 6:01 pm (2201 GMT)," with Mahdi pronounced dead four minutes later.

Louisiana | Lawyers of Jessie Hoffman speak about their final moments before execution

As Louisiana prepared its first execution in 15 years, a team of lawyers from Loyola Law were working to save Jessie Hoffman’s life. “I was a young lawyer three years out of law school, and Jessie was almost finished with his appeals at that time, and my boss told me we needed to file something for Jessie because he’s in danger of being executed,” Kappel said. Kappel and her boss came up with a civil lawsuit to file that said since they wouldn’t give him a protocol for his execution, he was being deprived of due process, and the lawsuit was in the legal process for the next 10 years.

USA | Why the firing squad may be making a comeback

South Carolina plans to execute Mikal Mahdi on Friday for the murder of a police officer, draping a hood over his head and firing three bullets into his heart. The choice to die by firing squad – rather than lethal injection or the electric chair – was Mahdi’s own, his attorney said last month: “Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils.” If it proceeds, Mahdi’s execution would be the latest in a recent string of events that have put the spotlight on the firing squad as a handful of US death penalty states explore alternatives to lethal injection, by far the nation’s dominant execution method.

I spent 16 years in solitary in South Carolina. This is what it did to me. | Opinion

South Carolinian Randy Poindexter writes about the effects 16 years of solitary confinement had on him ahead of South Carolina’s planned execution of Mikal Mahdi , who spent months in solitary as a young man. For 16 years, I lived in a concrete cell. Twenty-three hours a day, every day, for more than 3,000 days, South Carolina kept me in solitary confinement. I was a young man before I was sent to solitary — angry, untreated and unwell. I made mistakes. But I wasn’t sentenced to madness. That’s what solitary did to me. My mental health worsened with each passing day. At first, paranoia and depression set in. Then, hallucinations and self-mutilation. I talked to people who weren’t there. I cut myself to feel something besides despair. I could do nothing as four of my friends and fellow prisoners took their own lives rather than endure another day of torturous isolation.

Arizona | The cruelty of isolation: There’s nothing ‘humane’ about how we treat the condemned

On March 19, I served as a witness to the execution of a man named Aaron Gunches, Arizona’s first since 2022. During his time on death row, he begged for death and was ultimately granted what is likely more appropriately described as an emotionless state-assisted suicide. This experience has profoundly impacted me, leading to deep reflection on the nature of death, humanity, and the role we play in our final moments. When someone is in the end stages of life, we talk about hospice care, comfort, care, easing suffering and humane death. We strive for a “good death” — a peaceful transition. I’ve seen good ones, and I’ve seen bad, unplanned ones.

Bangladesh | Botswana Woman Executed for Drug Trafficking

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Lesedi Molapisi, a Botswana national convicted of drug trafficking, was executed in Bangladesh on Friday, 21 March 2025. The 31-year-old was hanged at Dhaka Central Jail after exhausting all legal avenues to appeal her death sentence. Molapisi was arrested in January 2023 upon arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, where customs officials discovered 3.1 kilograms of heroin hidden in her luggage. Following a trial under Bangladesh’s Narcotics Control Act, she was sentenced to death in May 2024. Her execution was initially delayed due to political unrest in the country but was carried out last week.

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