The Supreme Court on Thursday last week upheld a life sentence conviction for a man who helped former Yunlin County councilor Yen Hsu-mao (顏旭懋) smuggle methamphetamine into Taiwan.
The Supreme Court ruled that the lower court verdict involving Chuang Chi-yi (莊啟義) properly examined the case and applied the law, and the sentence is appropriate, so it rejected Chuang’s appeal.
In lower court cases, Chuang was found to have helped then-Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilor Yen smuggle about 623kg of methamphetamine, which is listed as a Category II narcotic drug, into Taiwan from April to May 2021.
Photo: Chang Wen-chuan, Taipei Times
Yen was also sentenced to life imprisonment by the High Court on Oct. 12, but a decision on his appeal of the case remains pending.
According to previous court findings, Yen recruited people to transport drugs into Taiwan, provided funding for the operation, decided the amount of drugs to be brought in, contacted people to distribute them, and decided their price.
Yen had three accomplices: Chuang, Huang Chih-sheng (黃志生) and Chen Yao-hua (陳耀華).
Chuang captained the boat that brought in the drugs, while Chen provided the boat and Huang served as the middleman responsible for passing around money and information within Yen’s ring and coordinating land transportation for the drugs.
Chuang would captain the boat to waters southeast of the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) to collect the drugs in separate batches and then return to Taiwan proper and traffic the drugs through Yanpu Fishing Port (鹽埔漁港) in Pingtung County from April to May 2021, lower courts have said.
The Pingtung District Court found Chuang guilty of transporting Category II narcotics and gave him a life sentence, and the Kaohsiung branch of the High Court upheld the verdict after he appealed.
Chen was sentenced to 17 years and six months, and Huang was sentenced to six years and two months on June 21 by the High Court, and the Supreme Court upheld those sentences on Thursday.
The Supreme Court’s rulings are final and cannot be appealed.
Yen’s party membership was revoked by the DPP on April 30 last year, and he did not run for re-election as a county councilor in the local elections in November of the same year.
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