A Kaohsiung court handed down a 20-year prison term to a repeat drug offender who killed a motorcyclist and fled, a rare heavy sentence that signals a tougher line on drug-driving.

• A man drove after taking heroin, meth, and etomidate, swerved into oncoming traffic, and killed a motorcyclist.
• He abandoned his car and ran instead of calling for help; the victim was found only after a passerby spotted the wreck and died before reaching hospital.
• The court treated him as a repeat offender because he had served time for drug use within the past five years, which pushed the sentence higher.
• He has still not settled with or compensated the victim's family, a factor the judges weighed against him.
• The case was heard by Taiwan's citizen-judge panel, the mixed lay-professional courts introduced to bring public views into sentencing.

Outlook: The sentence can still be appealed, and it will be watched as a benchmark for how hard Taiwan's citizen-judge courts punish drug-driving deaths.