Amid rising public opinion on the issue of abolishing the death penalty, the Ministry of Justice executed death row inmate HUANG,LIN-KAI by firing squad yesterday (16th) after a five-year hiatus, sparking discussions from all walks of life. Regarding whether the execution of the death penalty has a deterrent effect, Wang Po-Chi, associate professor of the Department of Crime Prevention at Ming Chuan University, once cited relevant data, pointing out that the suspension of the death penalty is directly related to the rise in crime rates.
The recent constitutional interpretation of the death penalty was criticized by all walks of life as “actually abolishing the death penalty” because the threshold for the death penalty was raised and many death row inmates had the opportunity to file extraordinary appeals. On the 16th, the Minister of Justice suddenly signed the death penalty execution order for HUANG,LIN-KAI. This was not only the first case after the constitutional interpretation of the death penalty, but also the first death row inmate to be executed during the term of President LAI,CHING-TE. The news was exposed and attracted attention from all walks of life.
In this regard, the issue of the execution of the death penalty has sparked discussion on the Internet. As to whether the execution of the death penalty has a deterrent effect, Wang Po-Chi, Associate Professor, Department of Criminal Justic , Ming Chuan University has cited research from many American universities to support the deterrent effect of the death penalty.
Wang Boqi said that a study by the University of Colorado found that for every execution of the death penalty, five homicides could be reduced; a study by Emory University in Atlanta also showed that each execution of the death penalty could prevent 18 homicides. Additionally, after Illinois suspended the death penalty in 2000, there were 150 more homicides in the four years following the state’s moratorium on the death penalty. Therefore, Wang Po-Chi believes that these data show that there is a direct correlation between the suspension of the death penalty and the rising crime rate.
Looking back at the whole case, the death row inmate Huang Linkai failed to win back his 19-year-old girlfriend in 2013, so he brutally strangled his girlfriend and her mother to death. After being arrested, he was sentenced to death by the court for sexual assault and murder, and the sentence was finalized in 2017.