HKSAR v. CHAN SAI YUNG

HCMA 162/2002

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

MAGISTRACY APPEAL NO. 162 OF 2002

(ON APPEAL FROM WSCC 7422/2001)

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J U D G M E N T

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1. This might properly be regarded as a continuation, or as a post script to my judgment delivered on 4 October 2002. I now have the psychiatric report which I called for on that day. It is helpful and I am grateful for it.

2. In short, what it says is this. A psychologist's report reveals that the Appellant has a normal personality profile. He impressed as competitive, industrious and setting high standards to himself and to others. Present psychiatric assessment reveals him to be calm, composed and orientated: he is sincere and co-operative: he is understandably nervous about the present remand in jail: he is not suffering from many major psychiatric illness; no active psychiatric intervention is needed and no psychiatric recommendation is made.

3. Whilst I have listened carefully to all that Mr Egan has said this morning, it still seems to me that the sentence of six months' imprisonment imposed upon the Appellant was entirely appropriate for this offence and that, it cannot be considered by any stretch of the imagination, to be wrong in principle or manifestly excessive.

4. That said the sentence was imposed some nine months ago, and it has been hanging heavily over the Appellant's head since then whilst he has been on bail pending this appeal. In the normal course of events, that avails an Appellant nothing in the event that his appeal against conviction is unsuccessful: it is the chance that he takes.

5. However in this case I am conscious of what is said in paragraph 5 of the psychiatric report as to the reasons why the Appellant persued his appeal, and given that fact and all that I said in my judgment of the 4 October I think that justice will be well served in this case if I allow the appeal against sentence to the extent of reducing the term of imprisonment from one of six months to one of three months. And that I do.