TAIWAN. JUSTICE MINISTRY WORKING TO REDUCE EXECUTION RATE

while the government of Taiwan had not been able to achieve its goal of abolishing the death penalty, it had managed to lower the number of executions, the Ministry of Justice said. This was why the number of death-row convicts was on the rise, it said. Ministry statistics showed that as of February 17, there were 109 death-row convicts in prisons nationwide. But of the 17 prisoners sentenced to death in 2005, only three had been executed.
Justice Minister Morley Shih said that the Supreme Prosecutor's Office had filed extraordinary appeals to the Supreme Court in an effort to keep the prisoners alive.
For those whose extraordinary appeals had been rejected by the Supreme Court, the ministry had also attempted to stay their execution, Shih said. Shih said that Taiwan might not be able to abolish the death penalty soon, as a majority of the public believed it to be a more effective deterrent against crime than any other form of punishment. Moreover, many believed that without capital punishment, relatives of the victims of violent crimes would not be accorded justice, he added.