After watching many news discussions last night, I discovered that in recent child murder cases, judges’ sentencing rationales typically cite the “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” and “International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights” (commonly called International Human Rights Covenants) death penalty standards, using the argument that murderers “still have rehabilitation potential” to hand down life sentences.
As everyone knows, life imprisonment typically means 20-30 years inside, sometimes even shorter before returning to society.
The real death penalty issue today isn’t about abolition, but rather whether judicial discretion is constrained by upper-class pressure and individual moral balance.
🗣 Speaking to All Judges of the Republic of China
I hope to speak to all judges of the Republic of China through this platform:
An ordinary criminal might be corrected through long-term rehabilitation; an ordinary criminal still has humanity—when they commit crimes, there’s at least a motive, whether for money, for a woman, or momentary impulse.
But child killers, including yesterday’s Wang Jing-yu as well as past cases like Tseng Wen-chin and Kung Chung-an, have psychological characteristics fundamentally different from normal people.
They don’t deserve it.
Even if rehabilitation potential might exist sometime in the future, for this society there is no need for such rehabilitation. Please stop giving their lives chances to be reborn.