The Supreme Court yesterday upheld the death sentence for former Pingtung County Council Speaker Cheng Tai-chi
Cheng, 41, was speaker of Pingtung County from 1992 until he was discharged from the position in 1996 over his conviction in the 1994 murder of his childhood friend and business partner Chung Yuan-feng
The court found Cheng and Chung had formed a partnership to run a casino in Pingtung County, but the relationship quickly soured.
Cheng apparently was angered in November 1994, when Chung opened another casino with a different friend and had not paid the speaker the so-called protection fees from the casino's revenue.
Later that year, Cheng was again infuriated with Chung after a heated quarrel between a good friend of Chung's and councilor Huang Ching-ping
Cheng apparenlty was also spurred into action against Chung upon learning his friend was planning to kill Huang, who was also close to the speaker.
In December 1994, Cheng, Huang and four other accomplices went to Chung's house and killed him in front of his mother. Nineteen gunshot wounds were found on Chung's body.
A police investigation of the murder did not produce any results until Tsai Shih-yuan
Five days after the murder, Cheng turned himself in to authorities and provided investigators with clues which lead to the arrests of the other accomplices.
In June 1995, the Pingtung District Court found Cheng and Huang guilty of murder and sentenced both men to death. Two accomplices were sentenced to life and another received a jail term of 15 years and 10 months. The fourth accomplice was charged separately and his life sentence is still under appeal.
The High Court upheld Cheng's death sentence later that year, but the Supreme Court returned the case to the High Court for a review on the grounds of factual errors in previous judgments. Those errors included how many shots were fired, where the wounds were and how many guns were used.
Over the past five years, the case has gone back and forth between the High Court and Supreme Court. The Supreme Court finally issued a final ruling on the murder yesterday, upholding the death sentence for Cheng and the life sentences given to Huang and for the other two accomplices.
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