On this date on 2000, Lu Cheng was shot for murder in the Republic of China (Taiwan).
Lu Cheng was condemned in June 2000 for kidnapping and murdering a onetime high school classmate and the sentence executed with dispatch on the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
That was notwithstanding appeals by Lu’s camp against the highly circumstantial case — and a potentially compelling alibi that had been ignored in favor of a potentially torture-induced confession. (More in Chinese here)
Lu’s family has kept up protests posthumously, and even the Minister of Justice who signed Lu’s death warrant later turned against the death penalty himself.
Cases like Lu’s have helped drive a growing anti-death penalty sentiment in Taiwan, where executions declined throughout the 2000s, eventually settling into a five-year moratorium that has only recently been undone.
On this day..
- 1833: Nils Narumseie, terror of Kanten
- 1619: Melchior Grodziecki, Istvan Pongracz and Marko Krizin, Jesuits
- 1952: Mustafa Khamis and Muhammad al-Baqri, Egyptian labor activists
- 1960: George Scott
- 1736: Captain John Porteous, riotously lynched
- 1732: Pompey, poisoner of James Madison's grandfather
- 1914: Seven retreating Frenchmen, with surprising results
- 1849: Elisha Reese, suitor
- 1929: Constantine Beaver, Alaskan native
- 1768: Isaac Frasier, three strikes offender
- 1984: Ernest Dobbert, child abuser
- 1943: 186 prisoners at Plotzensee Prison