Chuang Lin-hsun (莊林勳), a member of the "Hsichih Trio," three men who saw their convictions for a 1991 double murder overturned early last year, only to face a new round of charges for the same crime later in the year, was admitted to a hospital with an overdose of sleeping pills Thursday night.
Chuang was in good condition after being released from a hospital yesterday.
"Chuang has been suffering from mental disorders for a while," said Hsu Wen-bin (
"He overdosed on sleeping pills on Thursday night but he is now all right after being hospitalized," Hsu said.
According to Hsu, Chuang began to suffer from mental disorders when he was in prison on the murder charges. After he was released in January last year, his illness improved somewhat but he started to get worse again after the Supreme Court granted a prosecutors' request and asked the Taiwan High Court to rehear the case in August last year.
"He is very upset about this. In addition, he has not been able to find a job since he was released, though he has been doing some volunteer work at a local human rights group," Hsu said.
When approached by reporters, Chuang said that he merely took too many pills. He said that he had not attempted suicide.
"I was trying to get some sleep last night so I decided to take some sleeping pills. However, it seemed to me that these pills were not working well so I decided to take more," Chuang said.
"That was why I overdosed and was sent to the hospital. I never thought about committing suicide," Chuang said.
The two other members of the Hsichih Trio, Su Chien-ho (
Su, Liu and Chuang were convicted in March 1991 of the murders of Wu Ming-han (
Another man, Wang Wen-hsiao (
The three men at first admitted assisting Wang but later said they were innocent and had falsely confessed as a result of police torture.
Prosecutors charged the trio with murder in October 1991.
They were sentenced to death by the Shihlin District Court in February 1992.
After three requests for extraordinary appeals -- all of which failed to convince the courts to change the men's verdicts from guilty to not guilty -- defense counsel Su Yiu-chen (
In September 1999, the Supreme Court accepted the appeal and asked the Taiwan High Court to prepare to rehear the case.
In January last year, Taiwan High Court judges said that defects in the evidence against the trio, including an unclear forensics report and a missing knife, were sufficient to overturn the men's convictions. In August the court agreed to rehear the case and in October the men were arraigned again.
The case still has not been resolved in the courts.
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