The man who murdered his wife and sister-in-law in Tucheng was sentenced to life imprisonment. Is it necessary to execute three people for the death penalty? | Lawyer Li Yusheng explains.

News Summary

According to ETtoday News, a man in Tucheng District, New Taipei City, was sentenced to two life sentences in the first instance for murdering his wife and sister-in-law in May 2025. The report relayed that the New Taipei District Court offered a case-by-case interpretation of the death penalty criteria of "most serious crime" and "murder of multiple people," stating that "multiple people" must be at least three, sparking dissatisfaction from the victims' families regarding the sentencing. This controversy concerns how the Constitutional Court's 113th year Constitutional Judgment No. 8 should be applied to individual cases, and the death penalty threshold cannot be generalized from news headlines alone.

Lawyer Li Yusheng explains

In a news report, Fidelity Law Firm lawyer Li Yusheng pointed out that such views concretize abstract judgment standards. When understanding this case, it is necessary to distinguish between the Constitutional Court's restrictions on the death penalty and how the court of first instance interpreted and applied that standard in this specific case, as described in the news report; the principle of "only killing three people can result in a death sentence" cannot be directly taken as a legal rule applicable to all murder cases.

According to Constitutional Court Judgment No. 8 of 2014, the death penalty is limited to cases that meet the requirements of completed intentional homicide, the most serious circumstances of the case, and the most rigorous due process of law. The court must still comprehensively examine the motive, means, harm caused, and other sentencing factors, and cannot only look at the number of victims, nor can it automatically sentence someone to death simply because multiple people have been killed.

If there is a dispute regarding the sentencing in the first instance, subsequent...Criminal AppealThe focus should return to the full text of the judgment, the facts of the crime, and the reasons for sentencing, specifically examining whether the court's interpretation of the constitutional judgment was appropriate and whether it fully evaluated the circumstances of the crime. The victim's family can present their reasons for dissatisfaction to the prosecutor; whether the original judgment will be upheld or modified in the subsequent proceedings should still be determined by the actual trial judgment.

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