The Kaohsiung branch of the Taiwan High Court yesterday acquitted a man who has been serving a sentence for a 2004 murder.
The Pingtung District Court in 2007 sentenced Liu Cheng-fu (劉正富), from Pingtung County’s Taiwu Township (泰武鄉), to 10 years in jail for causing injuries that resulted in the death of Pao Ke-chiang (包克強).
Liu, now 47, said the incident took place when he tried to help his cousins who were embroiled in a dispute over their relationship with a woman and her friends.
The two groups agreed to discuss the matter on a road in front of Wanjin Military Base in Pingtung County’s Wanjin Village (萬金村), he said.
The talks on the night of Aug. 19, 2004, degenerated into a violent confrontation, with one side vastly outnumbered by the other group, who had brought a dozen men, he said.
Both sides used metal rods, wooden clubs and other weapons, he said.
Pao sustained the most serious injuries and died after being rushed to a local hospital.
Based on witness statements and evidence, investigators determined that Liu had caused Pao’s injuries.
In the second ruling by the High Court in 2008, Liu was found guilty of murder and received a 20-year sentence.
In a retrial by the High Court in 2011, Liu’s conviction was upheld on the lesser charge of causing injuries that resulted in death, and the sentence was reduced to nine years.
The retrial was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Liu’s family and the Taiwan Innocence Project filed three extraordinary appeals after raising questions over witness identification and evidence collection procedures.
In July 2013, Liu began serving his nine-year sentence as the Supreme Court considered the extraordinary appeals and re-examined the case.
In yesterday’s ruling, which can be appealed, the judges determined that the crime scene was too dark for witnesses to make a positive determination, while citing several inconsistencies in witness testimonies and improper evidence collection procedures.
They also pointed out that the previous rulings had rejected evidence provided by the defense of sale receipts made hours before the brawl, which Liu’s lawyer said provided an alibi.
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm early yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, less than a week after a typhoon barreled across the nation. The agency issued an advisory at 3:30am stating that the 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, of the Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, with a 100km radius. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA
Residents have called on the Taipei City Government to reconsider its plan to demolish a four-decades-old pedestrian overpass near Daan Forest Park. The 42-year-old concrete and steel structure that serves as an elevated walkway over the intersection of Heping and Xinsheng roads is to be closed on Tuesday in preparation for demolition slated for completion by the end of the month. However, in recent days some local residents have been protesting the planned destruction of the intersection overpass that is rendered more poetically as “sky bridge” in Chinese. “This bridge carries the community’s collective memory,” said a man surnamed Chuang
FATALITIES: The storm claimed at least two lives — a female passenger in a truck that was struck by a falling tree and a man who was hit by a utility pole Workers cleared fallen trees and shop owners swept up debris yesterday after one of the biggest typhoons to hit the nation in decades claimed at least two lives. Typhoon Kong-rey was packing winds of 184kph when it slammed into eastern Taiwan on Thursday, uprooting trees, triggering floods and landslides, and knocking out power as it swept across the nation. A 56-year-old female foreign national died from her injuries after the small truck she was in was struck by a falling tree on Provincial Highway 14A early on Thursday. The second death was reported at 8pm in Taipei on Thursday after a 48-year-old man
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm earlier today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, in this year's Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am, the CWA said. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) with a 100km radius, it said. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA meteorologist Huang En-hung (黃恩宏) said. However, a more accurate forecast would be made on Wednesday, when Yinxing is