A 44-year-old woman surnamed Lin (林) was yesterday sentenced to 18 years in prison for beating her mother to death last year, although the defense told the Shilin District Court of Lin’s mental illness and alleged abuse by family members.
The judges convicted Lin of assaulting her mother and inducing injuries causing death, and said that despite having a mental illness, she had the ability to control her actions at the time of the crime, so the sentence could not be commuted to a lesser punishment.
As it was the first ruling, Lin can file an appeal.
An investigation showed that Lin lived with her 73-year-old mother in Taipei’s Tianmu (天母) area. The two had quarreled for many years, as Lin said she believed her mother took her things and had placed a death curse on her.
On March 1 last year, Lin knocked down her mother, punched and kicked her, struck her with a blunt object, and strangled her, leaving her lying unconscious in a pool of blood, investigators said.
Lin called the authorities at about 10pm, they said, but her mother was later pronounced dead.
She initially told police that her mother was beaten up in the neighborhood and brought home with serious injuries by two unknown men, but the evidence showed that her mother was at home that day, they added.
A psychiatric evaluation showed that Lin has schizophrenia, and has for years experienced paranoia, hallucinations and delusions, as well as heard voices, with investigators quoting her as saying that a voice inside her head at times controlled her actions.
Prosecutors said that Lin was aware and in control of her actions at the time, as she took out the garbage and misled investigators with false information.
Her lawyer told the court of how Lin’s parents sent her as a high-school student to the US, where she went on to earn a master’s degree, obtained a green card and got married, although she later divorced her husband and returned to Taiwan.
Evidence and psychiatric reports showing the emotional and physical abuse that Lin allegedly experienced from her parents and her husband were presented by her defense as causes of her mental illness.
Her lawyer said that Lin was later involved in a traffic accident that worsened her already weakened physical and mental state, and that she began to display unusual behavior and speech, purportedly showing her break from reality.
Although the court found Lin guilty and sentenced her to prison, it also ordered that she receive regular mental health treatment, saying that her mental condition should be understood so that she can be rehabilitated and kept from relapsing into crime.
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