A Taiwanese court has handed down a life sentence rather than the death penalty in a brutal double murder, leaving the victims' family furious.

• Hsieh Wen-hsiung killed his wife and her sister on a New Taipei street last July, ramming their scooter with his car before attacking them with a kitchen knife and a metal bat.
• The New Taipei District Court, using Taiwan's citizen judge system, convicted him of murder and sentenced him to life in prison with a permanent loss of civil rights.
• Prosecutors and the victims' parents had both asked for the death penalty; relatives wept outside the courtroom shouting that killing two people should not spare him execution.
• A psychiatric assessment found no antisocial personality disorder, but said he had poor emotional control and blamed others for his own violence, feeling shut out after moving into his in-laws' home.

Outlook: The case is likely to fuel Taiwan's ongoing debate over the death penalty and how citizen judges weigh it, with an appeal from either side possible.