A death row inmate was executed on Wednesday, less than a year after he was convicted of killing six people by setting fire to his home.
Minister of Justice Tsai Ching-hsiang (蔡清祥) said that he signed the order and the death sentence was carried out on Wednesday afternoon in New Taipei City.
The Supreme Court on July 10 last year sentenced 53-year-old Weng Jen-hsien (翁仁賢) to death after he was convicted of killing his parents, niece, nephew and nephew’s wife and his parents’ caregivers.
Weng set fire to his home in Taoyuan’s Longtan District (龍潭) on Feb. 7, 2016, after a family feud and the six died in the blaze, while four other relatives sustained injuries, the court said.
There are now 39 inmates on death row in Taiwan. The last execution before Weng’s was on Aug. 31, 2018.
It was Taiwan’s second execution since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of the Democratic Progressive Party took office in 2016.
Prior to that, in the eight years former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was in office, 33 death row inmates were executed.
Separately on Wednesday, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that sentenced four men and a woman to life in prison for the rape and murder of a schoolgirl in May 2015.
The girl, a junior-high school student from Hsinchu County surnamed Chiu (邱), reportedly had a verbal dispute with a 27-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃).
Furious about the way Huang was treated, her boyfriend, surnamed Lin (林), led three other men in abducting 14-year-old Chiu.
They took her from an Internet cafe to a riverside park, where they raped her and left.
Two of the men later returned to the site and found the girl dead. They subsequently notified the other three and burned Chiu’s body.
Lin had twice been given the death penalty before the High Court ruled that the five be handed life sentences.
The Supreme Court rejected an appeal against the High Court decision.
Wednesday’s ruling is final.
A drunk woman was sexually assaulted inside a crowded concourse of Taipei Railway Station on Thursday last week before a foreign tourist notified police, leading to calls for better education on bystander intervention and review of security infrastructure. The man, surnamed Chiu (邱), was taken into custody on charges of sexual assault, taking advantage of the woman’s condition and public indecency. Police discovered that Chiu was a fugitive with prior convictions for vehicle theft. He has been taken into custody and is to complete his unserved six-month sentence, police said. On Thursday last week, Chiu was seen wearing a white
EVA Airways, one of the leading international carriers in Taiwan, yesterday said that it was investigating reports that a cabin crew manager had ignored the condition of a sick flight attendant, who died on Saturday. The airline made the statement in response to a post circulating on social media that said that the flight attendant on an outbound flight was feeling sick and notified the cabin crew manager. Although the flight attendant grew increasingly ill on the return flight, the manager did not contact Medlink — a system that connects the aircraft to doctors on the ground for treatment advice during medical
The Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union yesterday vowed to protest at the EVA Air Marathon on Sunday next week should EVA Airway Corp’s management continue to ignore the union’s petition to change rules on employees’ leave of absence system, after a flight attendant reportedly died after working on a long-haul flight while ill. The case has generated public discussion over whether taking personal or sick leave should affect a worker’s performance review. Several union members yesterday protested at the Legislative Yuan, holding white flowers and placards, while shouting: “Life is priceless; requesting leave is not a crime.” “The union is scheduled to meet with
‘UNITED FRONT’ RHETORIC: China’s TAO also plans to hold weekly, instead of biweekly, news conferences because it wants to control the cross-strait discourse, an expert said China’s plan to expand its single-entry visa-on-arrival service to Taiwanese would be of limited interest to Taiwanese and is a feeble attempt by Chinese administrators to demonstrate that they are doing something, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesman Chen Binhua (陳斌華) said the program aims to facilitate travel to China for Taiwanese compatriots, regardless of whether they are arriving via direct flights or are entering mainland China through Hong Kong, Macau or other countries, and they would be able to apply for a single-entry visa-on-arrival at all eligible entry points in China. The policy aims
RSS