TAIWAN: COURT UPHOLDS DEATH PENALTY FOR ARSONIST

The Taiwan High Court on 20 February 2019 upheld convicted arsonist Weng Jen-hsien’s death sentence.
Weng, 53, had twice previously been found guilty of killing six people, including his parents and three relatives.
Weng had shown no remorse for his crime and there was no likelihood of rehabilitation, the court said.
Weng purchased 20 liters of gasoline, which he placed into bottles and plastic containers, and deliberately waited for a day until Lunar New Year’s Eve on Feb. 7, 2016, when the victims had scheduled a family gathering, an investigation found.
Weng ran into the house, doused his family members with gasoline and set them alight, it found.
Weng had said that he intended to kill all of his family, because he believed that, being the youngest of the seven siblings, his parents had neglected him, and that since childhood he had to do most of the work on the farm the family owned in Taoyuan’s Longtan District.