TANG CHAI v. THE QUEEN

CACC000547/1969

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG

APPELLATE JURISDICTION

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 547 OF 1969

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BETWEEN
	TANG CHAI	Appellant
	AND
	THE QUEEN	Respondent

Coram: Full Court (Briggs & McMullin, JJ.) in court.

Date of Judgment: 1 September 1969

 

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JUDGMENT

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1. The accused in this case was convicted upon his own plea on the 14th July, 1969, on two charges under the Larceny Ordinance and was sentenced to 2 1/2 years on each charge, the sentences to run consecutively. The first charge concerned larceny in a dwelling house contrary to s.25(a) and the second housebreaking and larceny contrary to s.43(a). He has a long record connected with dangerous drugs. His total record dates from 1954 to 1967. It includes six previous convictions for larceny. The first of these was in 1954 and there was then a gap until 1959. Between 1959 and 1968 he was sentenced for offences against the Larceny Ordinance on five further occasions, the heaviest combination of sentences in this period were sentences totalling 3 years imposed upon 10th August, 1963. There was then further dangerous drugs offences between 1963 and 1968 and in 1968 he came before the court for the last time prior to the present offences on four charges of robbery with aggravation, receiving for each charge a sentence of two years to run concurrently with the other sentences.

2. We have given the sentences in this case anxious consideration and while we have considerable sympathy with the views expressed by the trial judge in imposing them we feel that in going to the limit of his jurisdiction he erred in principle in not considering (a) the drug addiction which is clearly the root of the offences as the accused himself claims and (b) the fact that the crimes themselves involved no violence. The accused record is no doubt deplorable but, with the single exception of the offences for which he was convicted in January, 1968, the pattern of his criminal habit exhibits no violence. We think the sentences were in the circumstances excessive. We grant leave to appeal and treating the application for leave as the substantive appeal we allow the appeal to the extent that the sentences imposed upon both charges will be reduced to 2 years. In making this substitution we also take into account the offences which the accused asked to be considered when he was pleading guilty before the learned District Judge.

 

 

(G.G. Briggs)	(A.M. McMullin)
President	Appeal Judge

 

1st September, 1969.

  

Representation:

Appellant in person.

Penlington c.c. for Crown.

Oral judgment reduced into writing.