By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) yesterday demanded the execution of 45 death row inmates, saying that Minister of Justice Luo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪) should step down if she failed to see it done.
“All expenditure for death row inmates is illegally allocated budget, and 45 of the 52 inmates — seven were awaiting rulings from their extraordinary appeals — could be executed right after this session,” Wu said in a plenary session of the Legislative Yuan.
“I’m a devout Buddhist and I cannot bear to demand the execution… However, the executions are required by the current law,” Wu said in his interpellation of Luo.
Hearing gangsters say that they would be exempt from the death penalty regardless of what they do was unbearable, Wu said.
Wu added that in one case, an inmate is still on death row 10 years after his verdict was handed down.
Former minister of justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) stepped down over her refusal to carry out executions, while former minister of justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) signed 21 execution orders during his tenure.
Wu said if Luo refused to carry out the executions, he would ask the Control Yuan to impeach her.
Luo said she did not refuse to carry out the executions, but the inmates’ cases had to be reviewed one-by-one and only those cases where all remedy procedures had been exhausted could be carried out.
“We have to be very cautious on this issue,” Luo said.
Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said he supported Luo’s view, adding that executions would be carried out “at an appropriate time,” but Luo would be the one to make the final decision.
The last time Taiwan carried out the death penalty was on April 19 last year, when six inmates at different prisons were executed.