Death row prisoners in Taiwan have very restricted visitation and correspondence rights. Executions are shrouded in secrecy— families are usually not informed in advance about executions, only learning of the execution afterwards, when they are invited to collect the body. Under measures designed to make executions ‘more humane’ passed in 2020, death row prisoners are now permitted to hold nal religious rituals and leave messages—by voice or video—for family members. Taiwan permits execution by shooting or lethal injection, though in practice only death by handgun is used. Taiwan has also sentenced to death a number of people to death who would be classi ed as mentally ill or intellectually disabled—in violation of the ICCPR. While the government denies that executions are carried out on the mentally ill, death sentences continue to be handed down to such individuals, including foreign nationals. Furthermore, many capital defendants whose sentences were nalised by Taiwan’s Supreme Court had no legal representation when their cases were heard before the highest tribunal. Though against human rights law standards, Taiwan’s Criminal Code (Article 388) permits third instance trials to take place without counsel and a 2014 Death Penalty Project report identi ed numerous such cases in the past two decades. fi fi fi fi fi Activists and policy makers have deplored these cases as considerable breaches of due process protections and fundamental human rights and calls into question the accuracy and fairness of capital convictions. Foreign Nationals At the end of 2021, there was one foreign national on death row and three foreign nationals whose pending cases were at risk of receiving the death penalty. In each case the charges involved murder. Our research has revealed that foreign and dual nationals face distinctive disadvantages when charged with death penalty-eligible offences in Taiwan. For example, there have been several instances of inadequate translation services both pre-trial, during trial, and during the appeals process for foreign and dual nationals who did not speak Mandarin. Interpretation services are crucial because without adequate and accurate translation a foreign defendant may be unable to understand their legal position, Taiwan's legal system, or put forward their defence. In recent years, a number of Taiwanese death penalty defence lawyers have argued that poor translation services violated their client's due process and fair trial rights. Case Study 2008 - Cecilia Alcaraz Cecilia traveled to Taiwan in 2005 at 43 years old, seeking better job opportunities than those available in her home country, the Philippines. She rst worked as a domestic worker and once her contract expired, continued to work illegally in Taiwan as an English tutor.