‘I was afraid to sleep, in case I woke up back in jail.’ A man wrongly convicted of kidnap and murder, speaks about his two decades on death row in Taiwan.

The News Lens
Date: 2016/11/02
By: Edward White

There was a time when Hsu Tzu-chiang (徐自強) woke up, quietly put on his best suit, and then sat by himself for hours, waiting to be executed.

After the “normal” period when someone was likely taken to be killed passed, he would return to his cell, slowly remove the clothing, carefully fold it, and put it back under his bed, ready for the next day.

“How long exactly? I can’t remember, but this lasted for a couple of months,” Hsu, 48, told The News Lens International in Taipei.

It was during the early years of a 16-year stretch on death row, when he was “numb,” when he thought “sooner or later,” he would be executed. And in Taiwan, the condemned are allowed to wear their best clothing on their execution day.

Hsu, along with two others, was sentenced to death for the September 1995 kidnap and murder of businessman Huang Chun-shu (黃春樹). No material evidence was found connecting Hsu to the murder, but the confession of a codefendant – thought by some to be extracted during torture by the police – implicated Hsu. Fearing torture, Hsu went into hiding for months before he turned himself in, in June 1996.    [FULL  STORY]