Death penalty cases and new lawBy MariaWilkinsonFor the first time since the Legislative Yuan passed the new Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法) in 2019, the Judicial Yuan on Oct. 24 heard a case involving a death penalty inmate. The court chose only Huang Chun-chi’s (黃春棋) death penalty appeal out of the 38 death penalty cases that applied, along with a corruption case and an innocence case to represent the entirety of multiple claims. The Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty submitted a brief to the Constitutional Court. According to the US Supreme Court’s “death is different” jurisprudence, the death penalty is “qualitatively different” from all other punishments, so there should be more robust safeguards to examine such cases. Maria Wilkinson is an English correspondent for the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty.
