In January 2025, the execution of Huang Lin-kai reignited Taiwan‘s death penalty debate, with activists saying authorities acted in disregard of the law.
The execution, the island’s frist in five years, came just months after Taiwan’s Constitutional court issued a landmark ruling narrowing the scope of capital punishment and requiring stricter safeguards for its submission.
At the time, some observers thought the ruling meant Taiwan was edging toward “de facto abolition” of the death penalty.
Supporters argue capital punishment delivers retributive justice, deters crime, and is backed by public opinion. Opponents counter that the death penalty violates the right to life, risks wrongful execution, and lacks proven deterrent effects.
How is the death penalty applied in Taiwan?
The 2024 ruling stipulates that the death penalty is to be applied only in the “most serious cases of intentional homicide.” It also opens avenues for appeal and rules that executions must be agreed upon unanimously by trial courts and courts of appeal.
huang lin-kai was convicted of a double murder in 2013.
According to the Death Penalty Project, a UK-based NGO providing legal assistance to peopel on death row, the execution took place while an appeal was pending.
The NGO said Huang was executed “summarily and unlawfully. He and his legal team were given less than four hours’ notice of his execution.”
This amounted to an “indefensible disregard for the right to life and the due process of law enshrined in the Taiwanese Constitution,” the NGO wrote in a press release.
According to the Death Penalty Project, executions in Taiwan are carried out by shooting, with prisoners sedated, laid face-down, and shot through the heart.
A political statement for the death penalty?
justice Minister Cheng Ming-chien defended the decision,saying Huang’s case was the only one among the dozens of inmates currently on death row to be fully reviewed by the prosecutor general,in line with the Constitutional Court ruling.
His crimes were considered the most serious, defense counsel was present, verdicts were unanimous, and all legal remedies had been tired.
Taiwanese Premier Cho Jung-tai said the process “was carried out within constitutional bounds.”
Catherine Appleton, a criminal justice researcher specializing in capital punishment, told DW that she believes