Life sentence finalized for Malaysian student's killer

Taipei, April 23 (CNA) The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a life sentence given to Liang Yu-chih (梁育誌) for the 2020 murder of a Malaysian university student in southern Taiwan, making the ruling final.

The lifelong deprivation of civil rights imposed on Liang was also finalized.

According to prosecutors, Liang abducted the student on Oct. 28, 2020, as she was walking back to her dormitory at a university in Tainan. He strangled her with a rope and forced her into a vehicle, then raped her before killing her when she resisted. He later abandoned her body in a mountainous area in Kaohsiung.

Liang was initially sentenced to death by the Ciaotou District Court in March 2022. He was found guilty of rape resulting in death, robbery causing death, abandoning a corpse, and attempted rape in a separate case.

The Taiwan High Court's Kaohsiung Branch upheld the death sentence on appeal. However, the Supreme Court later ordered a retrial on the rape and murder charges, while finalizing separate sentences of two years and two years and 10 months for abandoning a corpse and attempted rape, respectively.

The death sentence was upheld in the first retrial, but the Supreme Court again ordered a retrial.

In a second retrial in January, the High Court's Kaohsiung Branch overturned the death sentence and instead imposed life imprisonment.

The court ruled that Liang's primary intent was robbery and sexual assault rather than premeditated murder, and that the crime did not meet the threshold of the "most serious crimes" required for capital punishment, citing the principle of cautious sentencing.

The victim's mother criticized the ruling at the time, saying the court placed undue emphasis on the possibility of rehabilitation over psychiatric assessments indicating a risk of reoffending.