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.
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