Participants expressed their views on whether Taiwan should continue or abolish the death penalty as they pitted themselves against each other in the first of four public hearings on the controversial issue that opened on Wednesday .

National Taiwan University Professor Lee Mao-sheng, who supports the abolition of capital punishment, said the execution of death row inmates has not achieved the purpose of deterring crime.

Alluding to the real risk of executing innocent convicts, Lee argued that it is impossible to avoid irrversible miscarriages of justice, because once a death-penalty inmate is executed, the dead cannot be revived.

However, Lin Chih-chieh, assistant professor of National Chiao Tung University, who is opposed to unconditionally abolishing or conditionally scrapping the death penalty, said the quality of judicial judgment should be upgraded to deal with the problem of wrongful convictions.

Lin added that capital punishment should not be carried out in "closed-door operations," but that legal proceedings and execution proceedings should be made public.

Meanwhile, a group concerned about crime victims' rights asked whether anyone who supports abolishing the death penalty has lost family members who were murdered, and has had experience dealing with that excruciating pain.

Sociologist Chu Hai-yuan said that the government's protection of crime victims is not adequate, and that effective protection would be a good policy to implement.

Chu said the public should be educated about the causes of crime and the purpose of punishment so as to effectively prevent crimes and increase protection and care for the victims and their families.

The issue of whether Taiwan should abolish the death penalty came to the fore recently when Former "Minister of Justice" Wang Ching-feng openly stated her objections to the death penalty and her refusal to approve any executions as "minister". Her statements led to public criticism, especially by victims' families and opposition legislators. Wang later resigned.

New "Justice Minister" Tseng Yung-fu has said he will approve the executions of prisoners on death row if they exhaust the appeals process.

In view of the controversial issue, the "Ministry of Justice" recently decided to sponsor four public hearings to hear the public's opinion on the matter. The hearing Wednesday was held in Banciao, Taipei County. Three others will be held later in Taichung, Kaohsiung and Hualien .

Tseng said Wednesday at the hearing that the "Ministry of Justice" will read through all the cases of the 44 inmates now on death row, and exhaust all relief measures before carrying out capital punishment on them.

"The execution of the death sentence will not drag on to the end of this year," Tseng said.

The "Ministry of Justice" has not approved an execution since December 2005.

China Daily/CNA

(HK Edition 04/22/2010 page4)