The Taiwan High Court on Tuesday upheld a conviction against three men in the beating death of gang member Chen Chih-chiang (陳智強) in June last year, but handed down heavier punishments, saying the defendants had carried out the murder with extreme cruelty and had shown no remorse for their actions.
The High Court sentenced Lee Hao (李灝) to 18 years in prison, Lee Chih-hao (李志豪) to 13 years and Chen Po-an (陳柏安) to 12 years in the second ruling in the case.
The New Taipei City District Court in the first ruling sentenced the men to 14 years, 12 years and 11 years in prison respectively.
The suspects were all 25 years old when they kidnapped Chen Chih-chiang before beating him with a baseball bat and metal rods.
They have said they wanted to “teach him a lesson” over a dispute.
Background checks showed that Chen Chih-chiang was the boss of a local chapter of the Bamboo Union gang and was active in Taipei’s Nangang (南港) and New Taipei City’s Sijhih (汐止) districts, where the organized crime syndicate had been involved in loan sharking, debt collection and extortion, officials said.
The defendants were reportedly low-ranking members of a rival chapter of the Tien Dao Meng gang operating in the same areas, and they had a financial dispute with the victim over the operation of underground businesses.
Lee Hao led the beating and torture of Chen Chih-chiang, which involved using a heated metal rod to burn his back and buttocks, in addition to repeated blows using a bat and rods, investigators said.
After three hours of beating, the suspects wrapped duct tape around Chen Chih-chiang’s neck, who later died from the injuries he had sustained and loss of blood, investigators said.
An autopsy determined that Chen Chih-chiang’s body was covered in bruises and his skull was fractured, they added.
The suspects appealed the first ruling, saying they should not be charged with murder and that it was a case of causing unintentional death due to injuries, which carries a lighter sentence.
The High Court struck down the appeal, saying they had killed the victim in an extremely cruel manner, had initially denied taking part in the beating and showed no remorse for their actions.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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