"Killing 3 people counts as a majority. The judge over-interpreted the death penalty constitutional interpretation case." A man who killed his wife in Tucheng escaped death in the first trial and the prosecutor appealed

Prosecution of four major points of contention

A man, Xie Wenxiong, hacked his wife and sister-in-law to death on the street in Tucheng, New Taipei City last year, shocking the society. In August, the People's Court of the New Taipei District Court sentenced Xie Nan to life imprisonment for murder. The verdict was released recently. It mentioned that Xie Nan killed two people, which did not meet the definition of killing "the majority" in Constitutional Judgment No. 8 of 2013. The New Taipei District Prosecutor's Office believed that the original verdict was based on whether Xie Nan was premeditated and that the method was not cruel. It was not appropriate to set a threshold based on a fixed number of people. This was inconsistent with the intention that life and legal interests should be highly protected.

The prosecutor also expressed respect for the court, but filed an appeal based on its duty to safeguard the rights and interests of the victims, the legal interests of life and social justice.

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Premeditation is too strict

On the day of the verdict in this case, a national judge declined to appear in court to pronounce the verdict. Afterwards, a national judge contacted the media and was interviewed: "I have pain but I can't talk about it." After the verdict was released, it aroused discussion. The prosecutor discussed in four general directions. The first was the premeditation part. Xie Nan had repeatedly warned of the murder since May last year, and purchased kitchen knives and aluminum rods the day before the incident. On the day of the incident, he ambush the victim on his way home. The original judgment required prosecutors to prove that the defendant had a "serial killing plan" at the premeditation stage, which overly restricted the meaning of "serial killings deliberately out of premeditation".

Cruel means are too narrowly evaluated

The second part is about the criminal means. The prosecutor pointed out that after Xie Nan drove into the car, he deliberately killed one person first, so that the other person could witness the murder of a close relative before killing him.

The original judgment held that "cruel means" was limited to the execution of the elements constituting murder, and excluding the above-mentioned criminal process from the evaluation was an over-restriction; in the part of the crime result, the literal meaning of "multiple people" does not automatically exclude two people, and the legal interests of life are irreplaceable and irrecoverable in nature, so it is inappropriate to set the threshold based on a fixed number of people. This interpretation of the original judgment essentially led to the conclusion that killing two people was not enough to constitute the most serious crime, which was not fully consistent with the intention that the legal interests of life should be highly protected.

The risk of re-offending has not been fully considered

In addition, regarding the "defendant's risk of re-offending and confiscation", the prosecutor pointed out that during the trial, Xie Nan admitted that he said "I will trade one of my lives for four of your lives." In addition to the victim, the persons he referred to included his parents-in-law. The original judgment only relied on the sentencing evaluation results during Xie Nan's detention to infer that he lacked a high risk of re-offending, and this part still needs to be re-tried.