TAIWAN: FIVE DEATH-ROW INMATES EXECUTED

April 29, 2014: five death-row inmates were executed in various parts of the island, the Justice Ministry said.
They were the first executions ordered by Luo Ying-shay since she became Justice Minister in September 2013.
Teng Kuo-liang was executed in Taipei Prison, Liu Yen-kuo in Taichung Prison, brothers Tu Ming-hsiung and Tu Ming-lang in Tainan Prison, and Tai Wen-cheng in Hualien Prison.
The five men had been found responsible for 11 deaths, the injuring of four people and more than 30 robberies.
“In each case there were at least two people killed, and five at most,” Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Ming-tang told a press conference in Taipei, adding that the convicted men had tortured and killed their victims with extremely cruel methods, leaving the victims’ families with unforgettable sorrow.
Tai was sentenced for raping two female taxi drivers in May 2001 after he had been granted a two-day leave from Hualien Prison where he was serving a sentence for a previous crime. He killed one of the women, surnamed Hsieh, with a knife.
Teng received the death penalty for killing a woman and her 10-year-old son in July 2009. He gave the woman drinks containing sedatives before he hit her on the head with a wooden knife and pushed her and her son into a river. He then jumped into the water and stabbed them to death, according to the Supreme Court ruling.
The Tu brothers were found guilty of the murders of a Taiwanese businessman, three of his Taiwanese employees and a Chinese woman in China while they were in Guangdong Province with their father in 2011.
Liu Yen-kuo was convicted of shooting dead a police officer in 1997 when he stormed into an illegal casino in the then-Taichung County.
The inmates were anaesthetised and then shot, it said. There are now 47 prisoners on death row, according to the ministry.
Taiwan resumed executions in 2010 after a five-year hiatus, putting four people to death. There were five executions in 2011, six in 2012 and another six in 2013. (Sources: AFP, 29/04/2014; taipeitimes.com, 29/94/2014)