YEUNG TAK-SHING v. THE QUEEN

CACC000217/1980

Headnote Drug Addiction Treatment Centre Order: made while serving a sentence of imprisonment

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG

(Appellate Jurisdiction)

CRIMINAL APPEAL No. 217 OF 1980

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

BETWEEN
	YEUNG TAK-SHING	Appellant
	AND
	THE QUEEN	Respondent

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

Coram: Silke, J. in Court

Date of Judgment: 21 March 1980

 

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

JUDGMENT

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

 

1. The appellant was convicted in North Kowloon Magistrates Court of "injecting a dangerous drug". Against that conviction he has appealed.

2. In the course of the hearing it transpired that his real complaint was not against the conviction but lay in respect of the sentence that was passed.

3. The appeal against the conviction, which on the evidence was a proper one, was dismissed.

4. The sentence imposed was Detention in a Drug Addiction Treatment Centre. In normal circumstances a very proper sentence.

5. But the circumstances here were not normal in that the appellant had on the 25th January 1980 been sentenced to a term of eighteen months imprisonment for possession of Dangerous Drug for the purpose of Unlawful Trafficing. This did not appear on the criminal record sheet placed before the learned Magistrate when he passed sentence for the instant offence on the 30th January 1980, though he was aware of it as his order read:-

          "To Drug Addiction Treatment Centre insofar as it might not interfere with present sentence he is serving in K 13372/79 - the eighteen month sentence."

6. I am told the net effect of this is that the period in the Treatment Centre would not start until after the appellant was released on completion of his eighteen months sentence.

7. As presumably he would be given some medical treatment while in prison, as he could be transferred to the Centre under the provisions of Section 8A of the Drug Addiction Treatment Centres Ordinance, and as presumably he would not have access to drug while he was there, I thought the imposition of a period of detention in the Treatment Centre starting over a year after that particular sentence was imposed to be wrong in principal.

8. Accordingly, and without objection from the Crown, I gave leave to appeal against sentence out of time, allowed the appeal insofar as a period of imprisonment for one year was substituted for the Drug Addiction Treatment Centre order. That sentence to run concurrently with the sentence being presently served.

 

 

	(William Silke)
	Judge of the High Court

 

Representation:

Appellant in person

Mr. Reid for Crown