Peng Gets Life Without Parole for 2 Murders

Breaking down at one point with repeated sobs of “It’s not me, it’s not me,” Li-Yun “Lisa” Peng was sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole for killing her tycoon husband’s mistress and the woman’s infant boy who was born of the affair.

Peng’s emotional outburst marked a dramatic end to the 1993 love-triangle murder case that captivated an audience on both sides of the Pacific.

The judge received more than 400 letters before Friday’s sentencing, many seeking leniency for Peng. Those included a plea from Peng’s husband who wrote of her patience in enduring his “lost journey.”

In her own letter, Lisa Peng, a Taiwanese national, described herself as a “poor unlucky woman who has been forgotten by God.”

Family members of the victim, 25-year-old Ranbing “Jennifer” Ji, said Friday they were counting on a harsh sentence.

“This crime is too ferocious, too cruel,” said Zhuo-Chuan Ji, the victim’s father, speaking through a Chinese interpreter. “She would not even let the 5-month-old infant go. What kind of guilt could a little kid have?”

As the victim’s sister, Jacqueline Ji, walked to the podium to speak before the judge, Peng threw down her head and wailed that she was innocent. The outburst provoked more sobs and moans from others in the courtroom.

Jacqueline Ji cried as she spoke of her sadness over the killings and her relief that Lisa Peng would spend the rest of her life in prison.

“The sad part is that even heaven can no longer return them, mother and son, to us,” the sister said, speaking through an interpreter. “The happy part is that we have the sympathy and support of the whole family and of the Chinese people who sympathize with us.”

Lisa Peng’s family begged the court for leniency, her mother tearfully describing how Tseng “Jim” Peng’s affair destroyed their family.

“I haven’t been able to touch my own daughter in the past three years,” Wu Mei Lin told the judge. “Please do whatever you can so I have a chance to touch my own daughter. . . . I feel really sorry for my daughter. Jennifer is the one who tried to break them up. . . . Please, your honor, please.”

Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan, while citing Peng’s exemplary life before the killings and the long suffering she endured from her husband, said he could not justify deviating from the sentence required by the jury’s verdict.

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Defense attorney Marshall M. Schulman said he was disappointed the judge rejected his request to reduce the murder verdict involving Ji to manslaughter, which would have made Lisa Peng eligible for parole in her late 70s.

“The judge had every opportunity to reduce this, and the prosecutor would not have objected. He himself admitted it was an unusual case,” Schulman said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Molko did not recommend a specific sentence, but said Peng should spend many years in prison for a crime he called a “horrible tragedy.”

“I have to remind myself, and I think everyone here does too, that this is not a movie,” Molko told the judge. “We all wish it were a movie, that it was not real.

“Yes, Lisa Peng was wronged by her husband,” Molko continued. “No one has ever denied that. . . . You could even argue that she was wronged by Jennifer. But Jennifer did not deserve to die for that. And that cute little baby . . . did not deserve to lose his chance to grow up. We can’t forget that.”

Peng, 46, whose first trial ended with a hung jury last fall, was convicted by a second jury in April of fatally stabbing Ji and suffocating 5-month-old Kevin Ji.

The second jury found Peng guilty of second-degree murder in Ji’s death and first-degree murder for the slaying of Kevin, who was fathered by Peng’s husband. The verdict included a multiple-murder finding that made her eligible for the life term without parole.

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Ji was found dead Aug. 18, 1993, on the sofa of her Mission Viejo apartment with 19 stab wounds, and Kevin lay in his crib with a T-shirt stuffed in his mouth.

The prosecutor contended Peng ambushed Ji in a rage over the victim’s three-year-old affair with Peng’s husband, a 53-year-old wealthy Taiwanese businessman who runs an international electronics firm. Lisa Peng had warned Ji away from her husband in the past and once chopped up some of Ji’s clothes she had found in a closet, according to testimony.

DNA testing of Lisa Peng’s saliva linked her to a bite mark on the victim’s left arm, and the prosecution case also included incriminating statements she made to her husband. Lisa Peng was staying at a separate home the couple owned in Rancho Santa Margarita at the time of the slayings.

The defense conceded that Peng bit Ji during a confrontation, but that the defendant left the house without killing anyone. The defense instead argued the murder was carried out by Jim Peng. Schulman said the millionaire businessman feared Ji was about to end the relationship and might seek child support and a share of a business in which he and Ji were once involved.

But jurors said they quickly concluded that Jim Peng could not have killed because he was en route from Asia at the time authorities said the killings took place. They said they believed Lisa Peng had gone to Ji’s home to talk about the affair when the confrontation escalated violently out of control.

Schulman had disputed the time of death, and said Jim Peng sought to implicate his wife by helping police.

Jim Peng and Ji met in mainland China in 1990 and began the affair soon after. Ji, who worked for Peng’s company for a time, became pregnant and moved into the apartment Jim Peng kept for her in Mission Viejo.

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Even as jurors convicted Lisa Peng, several said they heaped much of the blame for the ordeal on Jim Peng, who refused to travel from his home in Taiwan to testify during the two trials, and did not attend Friday’s sentencing. Lisa and Jim Peng have two sons, ages 18 and 22, who attend separate schools in Southern California.

The soap opera-like case, with its dramatic mix of murder, sexual politics and international wealth, received widespread attention in Taiwan and within Southern California’s Chinese community, prompting debate on who was to blame for the tragedy. Chinese-language media flocked to the trial and a Hong Kong director made a movie about the case in 1994.

In recent weeks, Judge Ryan received dozens of letters, many solicited through an ad someone placed in a Taiwanese-language newspaper urging leniency for Peng. Several jurors who convicted Peng, some of whom attended the sentencing, were among those who urged a more lenient sentence.

Peng’s attorneys earlier sought to overturn the verdict, largely because of allegations that a juror had improperly asked another during a break in deliberations about what sentence Peng might receive for the first-degree murder decision they had just reached. The juror said he didn’t know, guessing anywhere from 7 to 22 years, according to court testimony.

The judge said the question violated his instructions to jurors against talking about the case outside deliberations or considering potential sentences, but said the misconduct did not taint the jury’s decision.

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Peng’s lawyers said Friday they already have filed notice of their intent to appeal the conviction and sentence. A hearing to determine restitution for the victim’s family is set for Thursday. Ji’s family also has a wrongful death lawsuit pending against Lisa Peng in Orange County.

Lisa Peng, in her letter to the court, said she feels sadness about the deaths and is filled with “guilt, helplessness and sadness” that she can’t be a proper mother to her sons, according to a pre-sentencing report.

“The center of my life was never myself, but my husband and my children,” said Peng, who met her husband in 1967 while he was her supervisor at a Taiwanese financial firm.

She said her life “came apart at the seams” when her husband met Ji.

“I thought he loved me,” she wrote.

Jim Peng wrote the judge too, saying he felt a duty to speak on behalf of “my poor, unfortunate Lisa.”

“Having been 20-some years of husband and wife, I definitely know that Lisa is a kind woman and firmly believe that she is innocent, that she, too, is only a victim in this tragedy.”