TAIPEI (Taiwan News) -- A death row prisoner in the Taipei Detention Center was denied a request late last year to be allowed to purchase an inflatable sex doll, as well as offer to donate his hair to cancer patients, reported Liberty Times.
Late last year, the Department of Corrections denied a request by 48-year-old Hsiao Ren-chun (蕭仁俊), who has been in prison for 23 years and on death row for 8 years, to request the purchase an inflatable love doll. The department also rejected his request that he donate his hair for child cancer patients.
Hsiao said that he would pay for the doll at his own expense and promised that he would clean it himself after using it. As no other prisoners had made such a request in the past, the department conducted a thorough survey of practices and relevant laws in other countries.
After studying the issue, the department earlier this year dismissed his application for the blowup doll because it was not deemed as a necessity for prison life.
As for his request to donate hair, the department said that hair for donation must be grown to at least 15 centimeters in length, but the fact that male prisoners' hair length is limited to 3 centimeters precludes him from making such a donation.
Hsiao was released from prison on parole in 1995, after serving time for robbery and kidnapping. However, he and his accomplice Liao Chia-lin (廖家麟) went on to commit 12 more robberies.
In 1996, he and Liao were arrested after breaking into the office of attorney Chou Te-sheng (周德勝), strangling him with a rope, and slicing him nine times with a fruit knife, causing Chou to die from excessive bleeding. After a long series of trials, Hsiao and Liao were sentenced to death by Taiwan's Supreme Court in September 2010.
There are currently 41 prisoners awaiting death by a firing squad, including 22 in the Taipei Detention Center.