Taiwan's handling of murder case raises question of cross-strait co-operation
Jerome A. Cohen and Yu-Jie Chen say the execution of two Taiwanese brothers for murder was troubling for the manner of their conviction - the reliance on unexamined evidence from mainland China
Although the death penalty continues to be popular in Taiwan, the government's April 29 execution of two of its citizens, brothers Tu Ming-lang and Tu Ming-hsiung, for allegedly committing five murders in Guangdong in 2001 has understandably aroused public concern.
Despite a decade of judicial rulings, many informed observers question whether the convictions were consistent with the island's impressive progress in bringing due process of law to its criminal justice system. The case also revealed Taiwan's failure to take full advantage of cross-strait judicial co-operation.
The suspects - including their father, who died in 2010 while still in detention - were arrested in Taiwan shortly after the murders occurred. They were prosecuted in Tainan District Court for murder and several related offences.
In spring 2002, that court ordered Taiwanese police to ask Guangdong police for all evidence collected in the case, and a Taiwanese official later met Guangdong police in Macau, where he received forensic reports and witness statements obtained during investigation.
After reviewing the evidence at trial, however, in July 2002 the district court acquitted all three defendants of murder, while convicting them of two of the lesser offences.
One of the prosecution's key pieces of evidence was the written statements Guangdong police took from a local taxi driver. On the first day the driver was interviewed, he failed to tell the police what he remembered in a second interview the next day - that, before the murders, he had bought the defendants rubber gloves used in the killings and later driven the brothers to buy the murder weapon, a melon knife.
