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HCCC342 & HCCC343/2009
IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE
HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION
COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE
CRIMINAL CASE NO. 342 AND 343 OF 2009
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Date:
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3 February 2010 at 10.32 am
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Present:
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Ms Sally Yam, SPP of the Department of Justice, for HKSAR
Mr Lee Kwok-chuen, Victor, instructed by Edmund W H Chow & Co, assigned by Director of Legal Aid, for the Accused
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Offence:
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(1) Attempted Robbery (企圖搶劫罪)
(2) Possession of arms and ammunition without a licence (無牌管有槍械及彈藥)
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Transcript of the Audio Recording
of the Sentence in the above Case
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COURT: I have to sentence you for two offences: attempted robbery and the possession of arms and ammunition without a licence.
You are an illegal immigrant. You have persistently flouted our immigration laws and come here when you should not have done and you were back here in the spring of last year. On 25 April you went into a bank and passed the teller a note. It read, “Don’t make any noise. Robbery. Take out the money. I have a remote-controlled bomb. Quick.” They did not respond. You left the bank empty-handed. You displayed no weapon. You displayed no bomb.
Shortly thereafter, on 3 May, a policeman stopped you in the street. With some sharp instincts he wanted to know what it was you carried and he there found that you carried a self‑loading homemade pistol. There was a bullet in the magazine and a bullet in the chamber. From marks on the bullet, an attempt had been made to discharge the weapon. Due to a defect in the relationship between the firing pin and the bullet it was defective and it would not fire.
You made a statement to the police following this in which you revealed that you had no money and that if you could not find a friend to put you in funds then you would use the pistol to frighten some women and take their money. Part of your purpose, at least in your possession of the firearm, was, therefore, a criminal one, in the sense that you had it with the commission of a criminal offence in mind.
Conduct such as I have just described is familiar and your counsel has been able to demonstrate a pattern of sentencing from showing me similar cases. For the robbery at the bank, consistently sentences where no device is actually displayed there have been sentences in the region of 6 years after a plea of guilty, especially as where here, it is an attempted robbery. Accordingly, the sentence I shall pass upon the indictment 342 of 2009, charging the attempted robbery, is one of 6 years’ imprisonment.
If you had have been carrying the pistol, referred to in the indictment 343 of 2009, in a loaded state and in a functioning state I would have taken a starting point of 12 years. The pistol was defective. The risk to the public was therefore the less. I reflect that in a starting point of 10½ years which I shall reduce, by reason of the one‑third discount that you have from your plea of guilty, to a sentence therefore on that indictment of 7 years.
I have to look at the totality and I judge that the right total is one of 10 years’ imprisonment, which I shall achieve by overlapping the two sentences. So the sentences will, accordingly, be ordered to commence on Count 2 at such period that it will extend the 6 years on Count 1 to 7 years. In other words, 4 years of the sentence on what I call Count 2, indictment No. 2, which is 343 of 2009, will run consecutively to the sentence on the indictment 342.
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