Taiwan’s Oldest Death Row Prisoner Denied Retrial by Supreme Court

TAIWAN’S OLDEST DEATH ROW prisoner, Wang Xin-fu, has been denied a retrial by the Supreme Court. This occurs despite the fact that Wang has consistently maintained his innocence and, in fact, did not commit the murders for which he is on death row.

In particular, Wang was sentenced to capital punishment in 2006 over the killing of two police officers at a karaoke bar in 1990. The shooting was committed by Chen Rong-jie, who was then 19.

Wang was accused of ordering the hit. It is believed that Wang’s confession of guilt was extracted through torture and intimidation.

Many of Taiwan’s current death row cases date back to the authoritarian period, during which it was common for confessions to be extracted through torture, or for evidence to be destroyed or go missing as part of cover-ups. Law enforcement officials were often under pressure to quickly find culprits, so as to not appear ineffectual, as a result of which they pinned the blame for crimes on unrelated individuals.

One well-known case is that of Chiou Ho-shun, Taiwan’s longest-serving death row inmate. In 2015, police officers who had been part of the case testified that they had tortured Chiou, and eight of the twelve individuals who faced charges over the case were minors at the time. Even so, Chiou has not been officially exonerated, though civil society groups have called on successive Taiwanese presidents to pardon him.

The Supreme Court’s ruling may not be surprising. The Supreme Court may wish to avoid controversy in giving Wang a retrial after a September 2024 Constitutional Court ruling that narrowed the scope of capital punishment but did not outlaw it.

The ruling narrowed the use of capital punishment to all but the most extraordinary cases. Capital punishment was maintained as constitutional, but the use of the death penalty was to be decided on the basis of factors such as severity of the crime, motive, and amount of injury inflicted on victims.

Nevertheless, as a means of attacking the DPP, the KMT was quick to frame the Constitutional Court ruling as a de facto abolition of capital punishment. New Taipei mayor Hou You-yi, for example, a former police officer, criticized the apparent disregard for justice for victims in the ruling, while public figures such as singer Pai Bing-bing, an advocate for the use of the death penalty after the murder of her daughter in 1997, called for the execution of all of Taiwan’s 37 individuals on death row.

Poll after poll, whether conducted by civil society groups opposed to capital punishment or groups in favor of it, show that Taiwanese society overwhelmingly supports the use of the death penalty, presumably with the view that it offers a social deterrent to violent crimes. The pan-Blue camp often suggests that without the use of capital punishment, society will go to pieces without the fear of punishment as a means of keeping violent criminals in line.

Given such pressure from the opposition, even as the DPP is thought to be internally divided on the issue of capital punishment, DPP presidents have sometimes carried out executions shortly before elections as a means of shoring up support–and demonstrating that they, too, are not against the death penalty. Capital punishment continues to be a wedge issue in Taiwanese politics, and many longstanding cases in which individuals have been framed of crimes they did not commit may not be resolved within their lifetimes.

Perhaps this is one of the ways in which issues regarding capital punishment in Taiwan stem from authoritarian attitudes that remain pervasive in society even after democratization, as legalistic views in society persist. Abolition of the death penalty is, in this sense, an issue that is rooted in transitional justice in Taiwan.

Source: newbloommag.net, Brian Hioe, March 23, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Death Penalty News For a World without the Death Penalty

Comments

Taylor Parker becomes 7th woman on death row in Texas

Taylor Parker is set to become the 7th woman on death row in Texas, following her sentencing Wednesday in Bowie County for the capital murder of Reagan Hancock and the kidnapping her unborn baby, Braxlynn Sage. The baby did not survive. The last woman to be handed a death sentence in the state was Kimberly Cargill in June 2012 for the slaying of her developmentally disabled babysitter in Smith County, who was set to testify against her in a custody battle. None of the women currently on death row in Texas are scheduled for execution. According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, 6 women have been executed in Texas since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, more than any other state, according to Death Penalty Information Center. The last woman to be executed in the U.S. was Lisa Montgomery in January 2021. It was the first execution of a female inmate carried out by the federal government since 1953, and her case is chillingly reminiscent of Parker’s. She wa...

Singapore | Ministry of Home Affairs refutes claims that death penalty was discussed during visit by Israel's security ministry

The Ministry of Home Affairs says discussions with the Israeli government involved the sharing of best practices in emergency response, crime prevention, and forensics. Issues relating to the death penalty “were never part of the meeting and were not discussed." SINGAPORE: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Friday (Sep 11) refuted claims by an Israeli media outlet that the death penalty was discussed during a visit by an Israeli delegation in May. The Haaretz newspaper reported on Sep 7 that a delegation comprising representatives from the Israel Prison Service and National Security Ministry made a “secret visit” to Singapore that month.

Tennessee | Christa Pike Requests Clemency Ahead of September 30 Execution Date; Experts’ Amicus Brief Points to ‘Substantial Risk’ of Re-traumatization

Lawyers for Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, filed a 226-page clemency petition with Governor Bill Lee, asking him to commute her death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole ahead of her September 30 execution date. Ms. Pike’s clemency petition outlines the case her team has built over decades of appeals: her actions at 18 years old cannot be separated from a childhood marked by repeated rape, sexual abuse, and neglect that went unaddressed by the adults and state systems meant to protect her. Once incarcerated, Ms. Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Alabama executes Jeffery Lee

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WBMA) — Alabama has executed Jeffery Lee, nearly three decades after he was convicted in the 1998 killings of two people during a pawnshop robbery in rural Dallas County. Lee, 49, was put to death by lethal injection Thursday evening at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. His execution came three months after a federal judge blocked Alabama's plans to execute him using nitrogen gas. He was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. Central Time, according to the office of Governor Kay Ivey.

Texas executes LeJames Norman

Texas kills man by lethal injection in state’s fifth execution this year A man convicted over the shooting deaths of 3 people was executed on Wednesday in Texas, while another execution scheduled for the same time in Georgia was halted by a judge. It’s the 5th execution in Texas this year. Georgia has yet to put anyone to death this year. The nation’s busiest death chamber is in Florida, which accounted for more than 1/2 the 25 executions already carried out in the US this year.

Alabama | Lethal injection for double murderer set for Thursday after court blocked nitrogen hypoxia execution in June

Alabama plans to execute Jeffery Lee on Thursday via lethal injection after a down-to-the-wire decision by the federal courts halted his death by nitrogen hypoxia in June. In response, Gov. Kay Ivey set the 30-hour window for the execution to be carried out by lethal injection beginning at 12 a.m. on Thursday, September 17, and expiring at 6 a.m. on Friday, September 18. Barring any further court action, the execution will take place at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.

Florida to execute William Thompson after nearly 48 years on death row

On Sept. 11, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a death warrant for William Thompson, convicted of the 1976 kidnapping, rape, and murder of 23-year-old Sally Ivester. Thompson, now 74, and another man were staying in a Miami Beach hotel room with Ivester and another woman, according to court records. After Ivester was unable to get money from her mother, the men beat and tortured her, prosecutors said. She died from internal bleeding and multiple injuries. Thompson was convicted in 1978 of kidnapping, rape, and first-degree murder.

He Spent 27 Years on Death Row as a Wrongfully Convicted Man. What Comes Next?

23-hour solitary confinement. 115-degree heat. Jimmie Duncan is haunted by the decades he spent in Louisiana’s Angola Prison—and how, even after being released, he still isn’t truly free. Jimmie “Chris” Duncan wiped the sweat off his forehead as he assessed his temporary home from the parking lot of a rundown motel in central Louisiana. Sure, there’s drug dealing and prostitution, he said on a recent summer afternoon. And he suspected his neighbors were cooking meth on a floor below the room he paid $350 a week to rent.

Afghanistan | Signs that horrific brutality is set to return

Kneeling next to a ditch, deep in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, a 22-year-old woman draws her last breath in a 'desert court' before she is shot in the back with an AK-47. Her executioner? Likely her hardline militant husband, in what the Taliban consider an 'honour killing'. It took less than an hour to decide Najiba had been adulterous – although it has been suggested this accusation was fabricated to protect her husband's reputation. Adultery is a crime that deserves capital punishment under the Taliban's strict interpretation of Sharia law. Fourteen years on from her death, little is known about her story, like many women slowly being erased from the fabric of Afghan society.

Florida executes Daniel Owen Conahan Jr.

In Florida’s 15th execution this year, man put to death for killing linked to ‘Hog Trail Murders’ A Florida man convicted in one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the “Hog Trail Murders” in the 1990s was put to death Thursday, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year. Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after receiving a 3-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least 6 people over a 3-year span.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog