A Taiwanese court has finalized a 14-year, 6-month prison sentence for an elderly man who shot and killed his neighbor over noise, closing a case that ran through Taiwan's new citizen-judge system.

• An elderly man in Chiayi shot a woman living nearby with a hunting rifle in August 2024, saying her nighttime noise had kept his family from sleeping for months.
• He called police and turned himself in afterward, but the court found he intended to kill and rejected his claim that the noise had damaged his mental state.
• Judges said he never reached a settlement with the victim's family and never fully explained what happened, so they saw no real remorse.
• The case was tried under Taiwan's citizen-judge panels, with the sentence covering murder plus illegal gun and ammunition charges.

Outlook: The Supreme Court has thrown out the final appeal, so the sentence stands and the man begins serving his term.