Chen Sui-tem Incident

Chen Sui-tem Incident (陳遀幐案) was a case of wrongful execution that occurred in the Republic of China in 1951. Chen Sui-tem was held on death row by the Internal Security Department of Kam-su Province, for espionage. At the same time, an execution for a different prisoner Chen Sui-sheng (陳隨勝) was ordered, but the execution squad carried out this sentence on Sui-tem instead.

The erroneous execution was known as early as a few days later by the Ministry of Defence, which supervised the Internal Security Department, but the Ministry of Justice remained mystified about the anomaly. Later, the execution squad was arrested on charges of tax evasion and demonstrated to be illiterate when unable to read the charges laid against them in open court. Instead, the captain of the squad merely relied on the rough silhouette and pronunciation of the prisoner's name to identify them before carrying out the execution.

The incident became an international humiliation for the Chinese government, which prosecuted the four executioners for gross negligence leading to human death. The Civil Service Council ordered new examinations for the four, which unsurprisingly confirmed their illiteracy, and soon stripped the four of their eligibility to hold office and initiated a new prosecution for defrauding the government with forged graduation certificates.

Despite the high-profile prosecutions, the Chinese government did not actively investigate the issue of the executioners' training, appointment, and supervision. Only after the statute of limitations had passed on this culpability in 1981 did a quiet investigation reveal in 1985 that the executioners probably were intentionally misled into executing the wrong prisoner, but by this point the four executioners had died in prison, and the prison officer most likely to have been behind the scheme, in battle.

Tax evasion trial

This action was begun by the Ministry of Finance at the behest of the Ministry of Justice, as the latter eventually found out about the wrongful execution but failed to extract answers from the Ministry of Defence. The charge was easily laid as the executioners lived in an area where cigarette paper was subject to stamp duty (in an honour system), even though virtually nobody paid for the stamp.

Gross negligence trial

For this trial, the legal question is whether a death had been caused because the four executioners had been neglected their duty where, were they not negligent, the death would have been prevented. Since the four had obviously failed to take care to ensure the prisoner they executed was the same person on the death warrant, they were found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in prison each, the maximum permissible in the law.