Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) yesterday authorized the execution of convicted murderer Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), the first death row prisoner to be put to death since President William Lai (賴清德) took office.
Huang was to be executed via a firing squad yesterday evening, which would leave Taiwan with 36 convicts on death row.
Photo: Wang Ting-chuan, Taipei Times
Huang on Oct. 1, 2013, broke into his ex-girlfriend Wang Ping-chih’s (王品智) residence in New Taipei City, where he raped and murdered Wang. He also killed Wang’s mother.
Huang was bitter over the breakup and her accusation that he had stolen NT$200,000 (US$6,074) from her bank account, prosecutors said in the indictment.
Huang entered Wang’s home and strangled her mother to death at 4pm, and waited for more than an hour for Wang to come home. He then bound, raped and strangled her, prosecutors said.
Huang left the scene after stealing NT$10,000 of cash.
Wang’s father found the bodies when he got home after 7pm.
The New Taipei District Court convicted Huang, and cited the particularly heinous nature of the crime and the high likelihood of reoffense as reasons for sentencing him to death.
That verdict was upheld in his mandatory second trial, a retrial and a final trial at the Supreme Court in 2017.
The top court in its ruling said that Huang’s actions were premeditated, as evidenced by the rope and mask he brought with him.
Cheng previously told lawmakers prisoners on the death row would not be executed, following the Constitutional Court’s ruling in September last year that only the most serious of premeditated crimes deserved capital punishment.
The ministry did not comment on Huang’s execution as of press time last night.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
RSS