Ministry of Justice officials confirmed yesterday that they have received the parole application of the man widely known as the "Hwakang Wolf" (華岡之狼) and said that the decision by the ministry may be made as soon as today.
The decision will be crucial to whether the man can successfully become a freshman at the National Taiwan University (NTU) this fall.
The "Wolf," identified only by his surname, Yang (楊), was convicted eight years ago on charges of theft and 27 counts of rape.
Most of his victims were female college students in Taipei City's Shihlin and Peitou areas.
He began his jail time at the Taipei Prison on Nov. 19, 1996.
He took the Joint College Entrance Exam in the summer of 2001 and gained admission to the Sociology Department at NTU. But his application for parole has been denied twice over the past two years.
"His case is being processed. As long as the deputy minister approves his request, he will be able to get parole and become a freshman as he wishes," said Huang Cheng-nan (黃徵男), the director of the justice ministry's Department of Corrections.
"It is possible that his application could be approved before the end of this week," Huang said
An department official who wished to remain anonymous said that Yang filed his third parole application to the Taipei Prison, where he is serving his 16-year sentence, last week and his parole request was preliminarily approved by the prison's rehabilitation committee.
The committee then submitted his application to the ministry for a final evaluation and approval.
According Taiwan's Criminal Code, which was amended in 1997, an inmate has to serve half of his prison sentence before he is qualified to apply for parole.
However, Yang's case was reviewed and considered when the old regulations, which require only that he serve one-third of his sentence, were still in place.
After his first parole application was turned down in 2001, Yang managed to gain a one-year leave from NTU sociology department to keep his admission valid for another year.
However, his second parole application was also rejected.
NTU notified Yang last year that his leave of absence was to expire last September and that he had to be enrolled and pay the tuition fee for that year or he would lose his admission.
It turned out that Yang paid the tuition fee and filed a one-year drop-out application for another year.
Now NTU has said that Yang would have to either go back to school and begin his classes or he would lose his admission placement for good.
If Yang loses his place, he will have to take the entrance exam again if he wants to gain admission to any university in the country.
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