Taipei resident Ho Po-han (何柏翰) on Tuesday vowed to appeal a civil court ruling requiring him to pay NT$640,000 (US$21,182) in compensation for the death of an alleged burglar.
Ho fought with the man in what he said was an act of self-defense.
The Taipei Shilin District Court on Monday ruled in favor of Chang Chun-ching’s (張俊卿) parents, who filed a civil case demanding NT$7 million in compensation, as the judges ruled that Ho had used excessive force in subduing Chang.
Chang died after Ho applied a choke hold as the two men fought inside Ho’s home.
Although Ho had the right to defend himself against aggression, the court said he had used excessive force resulting in Chang’s death and therefore had to bear 20 percent of the responsibility.
Chang, for entering Ho’s house with the intention of stealing, had to bear 80 percent of the responsibility, the court ruling said.
In an earlier criminal case launched by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office, the Taiwan High Court in September last year upheld a lower court’s guilty verdict against Ho, handing down a suspended sentence of three months for death through negligence, which could be reduced to a NT$90,000 fine.
Ho has insisted that he acted properly to defend his pregnant wife when Chang broke into their residence in October 2014.
Ho kept Chang in a choke hold until the police arrived 10 minutes after being called.
By the time the police arrived, Chang had lost consciousness, and he later died at a local hospital.
Reviewing the evidence, the judges said Chang suffered from a cardiovascular condition and could not endure a long deprivation from oxygen, and that Ho’s tight choke hold had caused internal bleeding in the neck region.
They concluded that Ho’s actions had directly led to Chang’s death.
“This is a very unfair decision and I cannot accept it. I will definitely appeal it, because it is an injustice,” Ho told reporters.
“The burglar broke into my house first. How could I know whether he was carrying weapons or had brought accomplices?” Ho said.
In heated discussions on the Web, most posts voiced support for Ho and decried the judges for punishing a courageous man for acting in justified self-defense because he wanted to protect his wife, who was eight months pregnant at the time.
Some netizens wrote that Ho and his family were the actual victims and should not have to pay any compensation, since Chang was a criminal who broke into their home.
One person wrote: “Is the court encouraging burglars? So, when they fail to steal things, the victims have to compensate them?”
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching