LI HEI CHUEN v. THE QUEEN

CACC000742/1972

  

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG

(APPELLATE JURISDICTION)

  

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 742 OF 1972

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BETWEEN
	LI HEI CHUEN	Appellant
	and
	THE QUEEN	Respondent

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Coram: Huggins J.

Date of Judgment: 30th November, 1972.

  

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JUDGMENT

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1. This is an appeal against conviction and sentence on a charge of burglary. The sentence was one of nine months' imprisonment.

2. The story told by the prosecution witness was perhaps a strange one : the Appellant engaged a driver and two coolies and took them to a factory where a person known to him was the manager : he then directed the coolies to remove eight bales of cotton from the factory to load them aboard the lorry and take them away : the factory manager saw the two coolies and questioned them : as a result they took the manager downstairs, where he saw the Appellant. The allegation is that the Appellant had no right to remove this yarn at all. He was not arrested on the spot and, indeed, was not arrested until some time later : there can have been no doubt as to his identity but the police say they could not find him.

3. The Appellant's story, both in the court below and before me, has been that he was mediating in a dispute, the dispute being between the factory manager and these two coolies. He denies that he had engaged the coolies and says that this prosecution is the reward he gets for trying to assist.

4. It was a somewhat strange story, as I have said, and the learned magistrate very rightly said that he had considered the possibility that the story of the prosecution was concocted since he thought there was a possibility that the factory manager was an accomplice. However, he was quite satisfied that the driver of the lorry and the two coolies were quite unaware of any attempt to steal and they were telling the truth when they said that they were engaged by or on behalf of the Appellant. If the evidence of the prosecution witnesses was true, the inevitable inference was that the Appellant was stealing these bales of cotton : he had conducted the coolies into the premises in order to indicate what was to be taken and the offence of burglary was established.

5. As to the matter of sentence, this was a brazen intrusion into the factory. It was an offence which placed the driver and the two coolies in grave danger of suspicion of being implicated and in fact also placed the factory manager under suspicion. In my view nine months' imprisonment was certainly not an excessive sentence.

6. The appeals are dismissed.

  

30th November, 1972.

  

Representation: