A Vietnamese man convicted of murder has had his 18-year prison sentence reduced to 14 years after the prosecutor in the 2017 case noticed that the ruling did not comply with sentencing guidelines, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday.
In a press release, the prosecutors’ office said the case involved a Vietnamese national, surnamed Vu, who came to Taiwan work in 2013.
On March 15, 2015, the then-22-year-old Vu and two friends became involved in an altercation with another group of Vietnamese at a Taoyuan restaurant, during which Vu fatally slashed one of the other men with a machete.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
In the criminal case that followed, Vu was found guilty of murder and sentenced to an 18-year prison term in 2017. Including time served in presentencing, he has now been in jail for nearly nine years.
Weng Chien-kang (翁健剛), the prosecutor in the case, discovered earlier this year that Vu’s sentence exceeded the statutory maximum set out in the Criminal Code, and reported the error to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, the statement said.
The error stemmed from the fact that under Article 271 of the Criminal Code, a person found guilty of murder could either be sentenced to death, to life imprisonment or to a prison term of “not less than 10 years.”
However, Article 33 of the code — which sets out five main types of criminal punishments, starting with death and life imprisonment — has as its next-most severe category sentences of “more than two months and less than 15 years.”
In other words, in a murder case in which the sentence is not death or life imprisonment, and in which there are no aggravating factors, the maximum sentence should be 15 years.
Upon being informed of the mistake, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office filed an extraordinary appeal at the Supreme Court in October, which voided the original ruling and resentenced Vu to 14 years.
Under the ruling, Vu, whose prison term was originally set to end in March 2033, is to be released in 2029.
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