Kaohsiung prosecutors yesterday sought the death penalty for a suspect accused of abducting and killing a Malaysian university student earlier this year.
At a news conference yesterday, Ciaotou District Chief Prosecutor Wang Po-tun (王柏敦) said that the office had indicted Liang Yu-chih (梁育誌) on several charges, including sexual assault and homicide.
Liang is accused of abducting a 24-year-old Malaysian student, surnamed Chung (鍾), as she was walking back to her dormitory at Tainan’s Chang Jung Christian University on Oct. 28.
Photo: Tsai Ching-hua, Taipei Times
According to the indictment, Liang is suspected of strangling Chung with a rope and sexually assaulting her before placing her in the back seat of his car.
He then allegedly took her phone and her iCash card, which he used to buy snacks and refreshments, investigators said.
At about 3am the following day, after discovering that she had died, he stopped at a rest area on National Freeway No. 3, the indictment says.
That afternoon, Liang dumped the victim’s body on Dagangshan (大崗山) in Kaohsiung’s Alian District (阿蓮), it says.
He was arrested in Kaohsiung later that evening.
According to Liang’s affidavit, he wanted to commit suicide after accruing debt and wished to do something before he died that he had not dared to do.
The prosecutors said that Liang had committed numerous criminal offenses since junior-high school, and that counseling and juvenile correctional services had been unable to deter him from reoffending.
While the defendant scored moderately high on a Static-99 assessment, he should be considered high risk due to his personality traits and a tendency to give in to peer pressure, Wang said.
The defendant is considered beyond remedial counseling based on his criminal record and the prosecution recommends the death penalty due to his complete lack of empathy, Wang added.
The case meets the standard set in Article 6.2 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which says that the death penalty should only be used for the “most serious crimes,” Wang said.
Chung’s family members have called for Liang to be sentenced to death, or they would seek to have Liang extradited to stand trial in Malaysia, but the prosecutors’ office did not simply acquiesce to the family’s demands, he said.
The prosecutors’ office proceeded yesterday with Liang’s indictment rather than apply to the district court to extend his detainment, he said.
Separately yesterday, the Ministry of Education said that university president Lee Yung-lung (李泳龍), Department of Student Affairs director Tu Chia-ling (杜嘉玲) and Department of General Affairs director Yen Yi-wen (顏義文) have resigned from the university over the case.
The ministry said that it would list administrative oversight as a factor when reviewing professors’ performance evaluations.
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