The Supreme Court yesterday upheld an earlier ruling in which Taipei Prison inmate Kuo Yi-fan (郭亦凡) was sentenced to an addtional four years and six months in prison for stabbing his cellmate in the face and blinding him.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court said that Kuo, 34, had responded extremely to a minor squabble, and he should have known that stabbing the pointed end of a pen into a person’s eye would do serious harm.
When the attack occurred in June 2018, Kuo was serving a sentence for a narcotics conviction.
After the initial ruling, Kuo kept appealing the decision, as he believed the sentence was too harsh. He wanted to pay the victim compensation, but he and his family could not come up with the money, so his appeals were rejected.
Meanwhile, prosecutors on Monday indicted six people over the beating to death of an inmate surnamed Chen (陳) in Kaohsiung Prison.
Chen had allegedly been quarreling with other inmates for some time, and in October last year, four of them beat him up, prosecutors said, adding that two prison guards were also involved.
Chen was taken to a local hospital, but died shortly afterwards.
Prison guards reported that Chen was ill and became unconscious, but medical examiners found that he had ruptured internal organs, broken bones and numerous bruises, prosecutors said.
Charges in the case range from document forgery to physical assault resulting in death.
In another court ruling, the High Court on Tuesday upheld former Hsinchu City councilor Lee Huang Chin-yen’s (李黃錦燕) four-year sentence for corruption.
Investigators found that while in office, Lee, a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), had over 10 years forged records and financial receipts so that she could pocket wages intended for office assistants.
She reportedly collected NT$10 million (US$333,267 at the current exchange rate) in total.
Initially a district court sentenced her to 10 years in prison.
After that, the case went to the High Court, which found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison, but she was later acquitted.
After another retrial, she was sentenced to four years in prison.
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