CHEUNG SAI KEUNG v. THE QUEEN

CACC000863/1974

 

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG

(APPELLATE JURISDICTION)

 

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 863 OF 1974

-----------------

 

BETWEEN
	CHEUNG SAI KEUNG	Appellant
	and
	THE QUEEN	Respondent

-----------------

Coram: Pickering, J.

Date of Judgment: 6th November, 1974.

 

-----------------

JUDGMENT

-----------------

 

1. This 17-year-old appellant was convicted of being a suspected person found loitering in that he was seen with a bunch of keys attempting to gain entry to locked cars. In October of last year he was sentenced to detention in a detention centre on three charges of robbery and one of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. It is thus apparent that his present sentence of detention in a training centre was a perfectly appropriate sentence and in the ordinary way this appeal against that sentence would have not the slightest prospect of success.

2. What has prompted me to allow the appeal is material which has come before me today upon the appeal and which was not before the learned magistrate. Before the magistrate all that the appellant said by way of allocutus was "I am prepared to go to England to help my father".

3. Upon the appeal, however, the appellant's mother sought leave to address me and produced five United Kingdom passports belonging to herself, the appellant and other members of her family. She also assured me that passports in respect of the two remaining members of her family were in the possession of her eldest son and, to substantiate her claim that the family was in the possession of seven passports, produced a covering memorandum from the Immigration Department enclosing seven passports. The memorandum was dated early October 1973 and the five passports which I saw were dated late September of that year. This lady further produced a letter from the United Kingdom Immigration Authorities stating that, following her husband's appointment to a post in Durham, England, approval was being sought for the entry into the United Kingdom of herself and her family and that such approval would take the form of an endorsement in their passports such endorsements consisting of entry permits into the United Kingdom. The five passports produced to me did in fact contain such entry permits dated July this year and expressed to be valid for six months.

4. The mother urged that if her son were to remain in the training centre this would effectively block the departure of the family to the United Kingdom since there would be nobody to look after him upon his release. Whilst therefore, the sentence imposed was perfectly apposite, I saw no reason why the whole family should be penalised as a result of this youth's crime and I allowed the appeal, set aside the sentence of detention in a training centre and substituted a sentence of three months' imprisonment suspended for eighteen months.

 

Representation:

Appellant in person.

Carolan, C.C., for respondent.