On January 8, 2002, Taiwan’s parliament abolished the Act for the Control and Punishment of Banditry...

On January 8, 2002, Taiwan’s parliament abolished the Act for the Control and Punishment of Banditry, commonly known as the Bandit Law. The Bandit Law called for a mandatory death penalty for a strange mix of offences, including «organizing groups, in the mountains or marshes, to resist the authority of government officials» and «occupying governmental buildings, cities, towns, railroads or military bases by force» as well as murder, robbery and rape. In all, the Bandit Law listed 10 different offences that carried a mandatory death penalty.
The Law, enacted in 1944, was originally intended to provide a kind of «catch-all» statute that would allow the Nationalists to execute a wide range of «criminal» offenders. In essence, the Bandit Law was a tool of repression and a legal excuse to execute prisoners while keeping up the appearance of maintaining law and order, and had been denounced as more suited to Taiwan's tough authoritarian past than the liberal democracy fostered by the lifting of martial law in 1987.
The abolition of this act prompted the amendment of the Criminal Code to remove the mandatory death penalty and permitting courts to hand down either the death penalty, life imprisonment or a 12-year prison term for kidnappers who kill their abducted victims, allowing judges to consider other factors in such cases. Another amendment allows judges to hand down jail terms for abductors who release their victims before being arrested, rather than the death sentence mandatory under the Act.
Taiwan's Justice Ministry hailed the abolishment of the Bandit Law as a crucial step that might lead to the scrapping of capital punishment.
On October 9, 2002 Taiwan took the first step towards abolishing the death penalty by dropping the sentence for teenagers under 18, who, up to then, could be condemned if found guilty of killing family members. Under the revised law the maximum penalty for the crime is a life sentence.
On October 27, 2003 the presidential office and the cabinet announced they were jointly drafting legislation to abolish the death penalty in the country.
An anti-terrorism law envisaging the death penalty for terrorist acts causing loss of life was approved by Taiwan’s government on October 29, 2003. Minister without Portfolio Hsu Chih-hsiung said the move was not contradictory to the government’s goal of abolishing executions.
On January 7, 2005, the Legislative Yuan ratified an overhaul of the Criminal Code that will gradually phase out the death penalty but raised the threshold of parole for inmates serving life sentences. Under the new revisions, people under the age of 18 or over 80 will be exempted from the death penalty even if they kill family members of direct lineage.
On September 7, 2005, Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian vowed to abolish death penalty so that Taiwan could become a country founded on the basis of human rights. "Since I became president in 2000, Taiwan launched the campaign to abolish the death penalty by reducing the handing down and execution of capital punishment, and by making it harder for inmates to receive parole and forcing them to pay more compensation to victims," he said. "My goal is to achieve zero executions within the shortest time and eventually abolish the death penalty," Chen said.
Taiwan was the first government outside of the United States to legislate lethal injection as a form of execution. However, Taiwan has used it once in 1997, and executions continue to be carried out by shooting. Executions usually take place close to dawn and are carried out by prison guards who position the prisoner on the ground, face down, and shoot him directly in the heart. An exception may be made, however, if the inmate is an organ donor, in which case the guards won't shoot for the heart. Three or more armed guards usually carry out an execution. All prisoners receive anaesthesia and are unconscious before they are shot.
Between 1994 and 2004, Taiwan executed 188 people, but executions had been progressively decreasing in the seven years between 1998 and 2004: 32 people were put to death in 1998; 24 in 1999; 17 in 2000; 10 in 2001; 9 in 2002, 7 in 2003, and down to 3 in 2004 and in 2005.
The latest execution in Taiwan took place in Taichung prison on December 26, 2005, when two men, Lin Meng-kai e Lin Hsin-hung, were put to death for murder.