The Supreme Court yesterday upheld a life sentence handed to Chen Po-chien (陳伯謙), 40, for the rape and murder of a woman at Taipei’s Huashan Creative Park (華山創意園區) in 2018.
Due to the viciousness of the crime, which included dismembering the body and disposing of it on Yangmingshan (陽明山), and lack of remorse, the Taipei District Court in its first ruling in August 2019 imposed the maximum death penalty.
The High Court in April last year overturned the ruling, instead sentencing Chen to life in prison.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Seeking capital punishment, the victim’s family appealed, resulting in yesterday’s Supreme Court verdict, which is final and cannot be appealed.
“Taiwan’s justice system is dead,” the victim’s father, surnamed Kao (高), told reporters after the ruling, condemning the judges for manipulating the law to overturn the original death sentence.
“Past psychiatric evaluations showed a near-zero chance Chen could be rehabilitated, but the judges deceived the public by saying the contrary,” Kao said. “We cannot accept this ruling.”
Separately, the Nantou District Court yesterday ordered a man in Puli Township (埔里鎮) who shot another man with a modified handgun last year to pay NT$2.93 million (US$105,078) in compensation to the victim.
The case was also allegedly a romantic triangle, as the Puli man, surnamed Chang (張), 47, believed his ex-girlfriend was seeing the other man, surnamed Pan (潘), 42, also from the Puli area.
The decision can be appealed.
Also yesterday, New Taipei City police said that a fitness instructor surnamed Chang (張) would face homicide charges after allegedly strangling his girlfriend to death.
Chang, 35, was reportedly in a relationship with a woman surnamed Huang (黃), 28, as they had been cohabiting for the past nine months in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋).
Neighbors told police that they heard the two quarreling on Tuesday afternoon, then saw the woman go out to buy dinner and return in the early evening.
A friend of Chang received a call from him later that night, allegedly requesting assistance with funeral arrangements. This prompted concern from the friend, who provided the address to police.
Police and firefighters had to break down the door, as Chang refused to let them in while brandishing a knife.
After gaining entry, they found the girlfriend’s body on the bed.
Chang was still wielding the knife with two stab wounds on his chest, leading police to believe the wounds were self-inflicted.
Police yesterday reported that Huang was pronounced dead at a hospital, while Chang was in a stable condition.
The woman got to know Chang when she took a job at the same gym and they entered into a relationship, police said.
It is alleged that Chang quit his fitness instructor job a month ago, while Huang had reportedly planned to move out since she started dating another man.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS