Should Death Penalty Be Allowed in Taiwan?

        In 2018, the degree of discussion on capital punishment, which is also called the death penalty, came to the high point because of the increasing of dismemberment cases that year. Actually, as human rights are more valued in this civil world than before, the persistence of death penalty is more frequently discussed in Taiwan. Based on that there is absolute value of human right and it is an invalid solution to solve social problems, death penalty should not be allowed in Taiwan.

 

        First, every life is absolutely equal and valuable, no one could deprive someone’s life, even the death penalty decided by government. According to Locke (1689), everyone has natural rights, including life, liberty, and property. When a murderer commits bloodguilt, which violates others’ life rights, he or she should be punished definitely through criminal code. However, it does not mean that the authority could take criminal’s life. We can see that the attitudes of all countries in EU towards death penalty are negative, which also reflects on International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), that they had have signed before. The article six of ICCPR (1966) clarifies clearly that “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” Taiwan, as a country also signed ICCPR, also advocate human rights, should rethink the necessity of death penalty. Consequently, felonry’s natural rights have to be protected as well, the government should not commit them to the capital punishment.

 

        Additionally, allowing the death penalty cannot really solve the problem of committing the murder in the society. Which is another way of saying, executing a murderer could make problem itself disappear, whereas it is only a temporary solution instead of a basic one. Human beings are social animals, and the interactions between people create interpersonal relationships which then build a society. Therefore, those seemed the individual's behaviors are actually deeply affected by the society. In accordance with A Review of the Death Penalty Judgments in Taiwan (2017), most of the death row prisoners were young and first-time offenders in the middle age who had education levels below middle school education and were unemployed or workers. This paper reveals the phenomenon that crimes and the social status are relative. Hence, if Taiwan wants to reduce the homicide rate, the government should start it from the social problems, not just executing the criminal.

 

        Despite some people might say that only the death penalty could comfort the victims’ families and eliminate the social insecurity, but it does not match the principle of proportionality[1] at all. Taking a look back to the essence of criminal code, it is a law aiming at punishing and correcting the criminals to make them not to commit crimes in the future. Also, in Taiwan, the proportionality test should be followed when making legal judgments. There are three steps in the proportionality test, which is appropriateness, necessity, and proportionality; if one step is not implemented in the adjudication, the adjudication will not be adopt and not be test in next step. The first step of the principle of proportionality is appropriateness[2], which means we should measure if the connection between the aims and the means is suitable or not. According to the appropriateness of the principle, we can know easily that comforting people is not suitable for the goal of the criminal code at any rate. The objective of criminal code is to punish and correct the felonry, and the death penalty is an inappropriate punishment that violates the principle of proportionality. In short, there are so many ways to chastise the prisoners and meanwhile match the proportionality test and the aims of criminal code, but the death penalty is not the one.

 

        ​ To sum up, the reason why death penalty should not be allowed in Taiwan is that depriving of natural rights cannot solve any problems including reducing the homicide rate, and the death penalty does not follow the principle of proportionality and match the aims of criminal code. Moreover, the capital punishment should not be allowed in the world which values human right, so as Taiwan. Execution is absolutely not the best choice for Taiwanese people.