FEATURE/Attorney transforms personal tragedy into advocacy against death penalty

By Teng Pei-ju, CNA staff reporter

"In the year of 1996... A-Ma was robbed on a hot summer night and left for dead in the street," attorney Essen Lee (李宣毅) recounted the tragic incident surrounding the death of his grandmother at the Constitutional Court in April.

Lee then recalled the fury he experienced as a 16-year-old high schooler after his grandmother, Lin Li-e (林李娥), died from head injuries.

But rather than voice a desire for revenge, Lee, now in his 40s, instead urged the 12 justices in front of him to do away with the death penalty system for good.

Lee and other attorneys have provided pro-bono support challenging the constitutionality of capital punishment as a statutory penalty in Taiwan. The widely disputed case was brought forward by 37 prisoners currently awaiting execution.

In a recent interview with CNA, Lee said the authorities presented the death penalty as a way to meet public expectations whenever heinous crimes were committed and as a form of "redress" for victims and their families.

However, he argued the punishment makes the government "indolent" in rooting out nefarious criminal acts and providing enough support for those adversely affected.

Most public discussions about why certain crimes are committed and how society can better prevent them from happening again "vanish" after the death penalty has been implemented, Lee observed.

He added that the government should redirect resources currently allocated to maintaining the death penalty system toward investigating the causes of crime and developing preventive measures.

The implementation of the death penalty has been substantially restricted in recent years, according to the Judicial Reform Foundation (JRF), a non-governmental organization that, among many initiatives, advocates the abolition of the death penalty.

Currently, only individuals convicted of serious homicides can be sentenced to death. The decision must also be upheld by the Supreme Court, JRF's Law and Policy Department head Elvin Lu (呂政諺) told CNA in a recent interview.

To Lee, however, the government has framed the death penalty as an act of justice intended to provide solace to grieving families of victims of crime and reassure a shocked society.

But he noted that despite the executions, those who lost loved ones remain "trapped in the trauma" of their ordeal, while serious crimes continue to be committed in the country.

According to Lee, while government-funded efforts to provide legal aid and social assistance for victims of crime and their families have improved over the past three decades, they remain short-term and insufficient.

Reflecting on his own experience, Lee likened trauma to "shingles," noting that while treatment can quickly ease the pain, the virus remains dormant in one's body and resurfaces when the immune system weakens.

All too often, however, the judicial and social support systems "walk away" from criminal cases within three to five years after an incident, leaving victims and their families -- especially those with fewer means -- struggling to get their lives back to some semblance of normal, he said.

Lee remains in the minority, however.

According to a survey conducted by the government-funded Association for Victims Support (AVS), an overwhelming 96.7 percent of the 90 individuals interviewed opposed the elimination of the death penalty. All respondents had experienced the death of a family member following a crime in the last three years.

The survey findings showed that a majority of victims' families view capital punishment as the "cost" for those who commit crimes, a means to "achieve justice" and a form of "comfort" for themselves.

The AVS, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) and headed up by the chief prosecutor of the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office, also cited victims' families as saying it was "only right and just" that "murderers make amends with their lives."

The association's survey is in line with polls previously carried out by the MOJ -- which defends the death penalty as constitutional and suggests the issue be left to the Legislature -- and the Crime Research Center at National Chung Cheng University.

Their polls have consistently indicated that 70 to 80 percent of Taiwanese have supported the retention of the death penalty over the last decade.

Speaking about the AVS polls, Lee said that given those interviewed had recently lost loved ones, their attitudes toward the death penalty were reasonable.

Lee acknowledged that he longed for the culprit to face the same punishment for many years after his grandmother's death, adding that it took him more than a decade to finally "move past" it.

He said this ability to move forward liberated him from continuously feeling stuck in his anger and grief.

At National Chengchi University's college of law, he sought to channel his feelings and address the void left by the loss of his grandmother by delving into criminology.

"I eventually developed my own observations and opinions about Taiwan's criminal policies... whether the state should continue to use the death penalty," said Lee, who has been a criminal defense lawyer since 2012.

Lee candidly admitted that he was not optimistic about winning the court case and having the Constitutional Court revoke the death penalty once and for all, even though he anticipated that more restrictions would be placed on its future applications.

Even so, he remains undeterred in his advocacy for abolition, comparing himself to a passionate missionary and taking up the cause as a way to honor the woman who, on behalf of his own mother, raised him through adolescence.

A missionary does not pick their cause, Lee said, adding that the main thing is "to not stop the work" and "to not forget about A-Ma."

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