THE QUEEN v. TAM SIU-MAN

IN THE SUPPEME COURT OF HIGH COURT

(Appellate Jurisidction)

MAGISTRACY CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 1133 OF 1989

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BETWEEN

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J U D G M E N T

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1. The appellant pleaded guilty to a charge of using an identity card relating to another person contrary to Section 12 of the Registration of Persons Regulations. On the 12th of August, she was asked to produce her identity card by a police officer on road block duties. At the time she was in a taxi which had been stopped in the road block. When the police officer checked the identity card which the appellant produced, he discovered that it was one which had been previously reported to have been lost. When the officer questioned the appellant about it, she admitted that the identity card was not hers that she had come to Hong Kong two weeks earlier by swimming across and that the identity card had been picked up by her somewhere in Kowloon. This was the first time she had come to Hong Kong. She told the magistrate that she was pregnant and that her baby was due in January 1990. She asked to be sent back to China as soon as possible.

2. The magistrate took this plea into consideration, but felt that, since the normal tariff for the offence was imprisonment for 15 months, he could not reduce that sentence by more than 3 months and accordingly sentenced her to imprisonment for 12 months.

3. Mr. Lee, on her behalf today, has put forward several submissions as to why this court on appeal should reduce the sentence even further. It is sufficient to say that I think that it is a strong humanitarian ground that she should desire to have her baby in her native village, and for that reason I would allow the appeal so that she can do so.

4. Accordingly, I allow the appeal quash the sentence and substitute a term of imprisonment for 6 months. According to my calculations, if she gets the normal remission for good behaviour, she should be axle to return to China in December.