Compiled by TRACY GUNAPALAN, CHOW HOW BAN and R. ARAVINTHAN
THE family of a murdered Malaysian student in Taiwan will appeal a High Court decision to commute the killer’s sentence from life imprisonment to 18 years and 10 months in jail.
Sin Chew Daily reported that the family’s legal team would press prosecutors to file an appeal against Thursday’s ruling.
The High Court heard the case in a retrial ordered by the Supreme Court due to the killer’s voluntary surrender to authorities.
In its latest ruling, the High Court found that Chen Po-yen, 33, had met requirements for commutation of sentence for surrendering himself.
The defence argued that in an unrelated arson case at a tyre shop in Hsinchu, after surrendering himself, the murderer was sentenced to life imprisonment for burning eight victims.
They said it would be unfair to Chen to be sentenced to life for killing one person.
Chen confessed to suffocating the student, surnamed Chai, to death in her rented residence after she refused to return some of the money he had transferred into her bank account.
Chai, who was 24 when she died in 2022, was studying at a Taipei university and working part-time as a model and livestreamer on social media.
> Taiwanese actress Vivian Hsu celebrated her birthday with her family members and close friends following a bout of thyroid cancer last year, China Press reported.
Hsu, who turned 50 on Wednesday, shared photos of the party on her social media accounts that showed the presence of her nine-year-old son and fellow celebrities such as Julia Peng, Ailing Tai and Ruby Lin.
“I work and live my life to the fullest as usual. There are still many things on my to-do list. I pray God will give me more time and I wish everyone well,” she said.
(The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.)
