A Taiwanese case in which a husband killed his wife and sister-in-law in the street has ended in a life sentence, drawing dissatisfaction from both the victims' family and the citizen judges who sat on the panel, prompting the court to call on the media to back off.

• Hsieh Wen-hsiung hacked his wife, surnamed Chang, and his sister-in-law to death in the street last year. The citizen judges' court found that the offence did not meet the threshold of "the most serious of circumstances" and sentenced him to two life terms rather than death.
• The victims' parents wept in court, saying the verdict was unjust, with the father shouting angrily, "What kind of citizen judges are these?"
• One of the citizen judges who sat on the panel complained that all six citizen judges wanted to impose the death penalty, but the three professional judges did not agree unanimously, and under the Constitutional Court's interpretation the death penalty therefore could not be imposed.
• The citizen judge said they had been left mentally and physically exhausted and were also called a "dinosaur judge", describing the citizen judges as reduced to mascots and a fig leaf.
• The New Taipei District Court issued a statement saying the deliberation process must be kept strictly confidential and that no one may probe into or disclose it, calling on the media to exercise self-restraint and refrain from further in-depth reporting, while also offering mental health support to the citizen judges.

Outlook: The case is likely to deepen public doubts about the substantive role of the citizen judge system in death penalty cases, and the related legal controversy is unlikely to subside any time soon.