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Killer of mistress claims innocence, may face jail time

A Taiwanese woman deported from the US after she pleaded guilty to the killing of her husband's mistress and baby in California arrived in Taiwan yesterday.

After an interview with the Criminal Investigation Bureau, Lin Li-yun (林黎雲), or Lisa Peng, 51, told the media that she was innocent.

"I didn't kill the victims ? I was treated unfairly during police interrogation [in the US]," she said, accusing the California police of "racial discrimination."

Lin has served more than seven years in jail in California for the high-profile 1993 double-murder. But she could still face jail time in Taiwan if re-convicted.

The Criminal Code in Taiwan applies to Taiwanese citizens abroad that commit offenses which carry a minimum punishment of not less than three years in prison.

The code also prescribes that an offense may be punished under the code even if a foreign court has rendered a final decision. However, if the punishment has been entirely or partially executed in the foreign country, further punishment may be entirely or partly remitted.

Under the Criminal Code, a murder conviction is punishable by death, life imprisonment, or imprisonment of not less than 10 years.

The International Criminal Affairs Division of the Criminal Investigation Bureau released Lin yesterday afternoon and since the case is no longer an international issue, is transferring the case to local prosecutors.

Lin's trials on charges of first- and second-degree murder hung three juries in California. On June 29 she pleaded guilty to the lesser charges of two counts of voluntary manslaughter in a plea bargain with prosecutors. She was granted parole and deported.

The story of the double-murder is a plot commonly played out across the Taiwan Strait in recent years: a Taiwanese businessman working in China takes a Chinese mistress, spurring conflict between his wife in Taiwan and the second woman.

Lin's husband Jim Peng (彭增吉) met a Chinese girl, Jennifer Ji (紀然冰), in 1990, when she was 22. In 1993 he set up the pregnant Ji in a California apartment.

On Aug. 18, 1993, Ji and her five-month-old infant Kevin Ji (紀啟威), were found dead in her apartment. The mother was stabbed 18 times while the baby was smothered to death.

In January of the following year police established that Lin, who entered the US a day before the murder, had committed the crime. A key piece of evidence was that a bite imprint on Jennifer's arm was found to be Lin's.

The police also secretly taped a conversation between Lin and her husband after a nine-hour interrogation. In the conversation Lin confessed to her husband that Ji died in a fight with her.

Lin was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in 1996 but an appeal court ruling in 1999 said that the verdict was invalid because the conversation was recorded in violation of the suspect's rights, including that she was refused an attorney during the interrogation.
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