COURT: The defendant was acquitted by unanimous jury after trial of murder and convicted of manslaughter by an unlawful and dangerous act. From the earliest opportunity he had indicated an intention to plead guilty to manslaughter. The prosecution rejected this plea and proceeded with a murder charge.
The defendant is now 63 years old, divorced, on CSSA payment and was living with his teenage son and ex-wife.
In this case, at 5.03 pm on 11 February 2022, the 999 police console operator received a call from the defendant, asking for an ambulance because someone had accidentally injured himself in his home. A man had struck himself in the chest with a metal plate by accident and was bleeding.
When ambulancemen arrived at 5.20 pm, Mr Xu Wenda, the deceased, was not breathing nor had a pulse any longer. He was taken to hospital and was certified dead at 6.10 pm.
The defendant went with the deceased in the ambulance and told the ambulancemen the deceased had been doing maintenance work in his kitchen when he was injured. He told the policeman in the same ambulance that the deceased was his friend who had come to do some maintenance work. When he was in the kitchen working alone, he suddenly shouted for help. The defendant rushed to the kitchen and found him bleeding. The deceased told him that he was plastering and had cut himself in the chest with a trowel.
These were all lies, there was no maintenance work being done nor was the deceased alone and cut himself. When the defendant was told the deceased was certified dead in the hospital, he became very emotional and told the police officer that, in fact, the deceased owed him money, had come up to repay him, but was only willing to repay him $9,000 of a $20,000 debt.
They had an argument and during the argument, the defendant picked up a beef knife and stabbed the deceased. The deceased was never armed himself.
On the following day, in a video-recorded interview, under caution, the defendant had a totally different version of events, and I am sure, made up a version to suggest the deceased launched and impaled himself into the beef knife that the defendant had picked up, only to threaten him with.
In this first interview, he said the argument was over money owed. 20 months later, there was another interview conducted at the request of the defendant, who said the real reason he picked up the knife was not because of a money debt, but because the deceased was smoking ‘Ice’ in his kitchen. The smoke was going out into the living room and affecting his 11-year-old son.
In my summing-up to the jury, I directed them to consider the alternative offence of manslaughter by a dangerous and unlawful act if they were not sure the defendant had the necessary intent for murder. I also directed them to consider an acquittal of manslaughter if they believed the defendant’s evidence was true or may be true, that is, it was entirely accidental.
The jury convicted the defendant of unlawful act manslaughter. They did not accept the highly improbable, and in my view ludicrous story, that it was an accident where the deceased impaled himself onto a 23 centimetre blade which was driven 10 centimetres into his chest through a main artery.
In addition, the defendant admits that before making a 999 call, he used a towel to clean the knife which would have been covered with the blood of the deceased and placed it back into the knife rack. Why would he have had the presence of mind to do that if there had really been a sudden and genuine accident?
Having observed the defendant in the witness box, and during his video-recorded interviews, as well as considering the photographs of the scene in the kitchen, I am sure the first and third video-recorded interviews were fabricated to fit an accident scenario.
As I have said, it appears the jury must have been of the same view. Out of the six versions of events that came out of the defendant’s mouth, I am sure the most truthful one was his immediate reaction to the news his friend had died at his hand.
That is, there was an argument about money, and he picked up a knife. During the argument, he stabbed the deceased in the heat of the moment.
From the verdict, the jury were clearly not able to find, so that they were sure, he had a murderous intent at that moment.
Looking at the WhatsApps over a period of months before February 2022, these men, if they were not friends, they were very involved with each other.
Both men were drug users, if not addicts. The defendant has a particularly bad criminal record, clearly drugs have been an issue for him for many years.
Judging from the sums of money that were mentioned almost on a daily basis in their WhatsApp messages, it is likely either there was money lending with high interest charged, or drugs being sold.
There is mention of pellets and weights of pellets. From the very last WhatsApp message, there was an outstanding sum of $10,500 owed by the deceased, after having just repaid the defendant $9,000. As I have said, the defendant was unemployed and on CSSA.
My dim view of this man does not add weight to the sentence I will impose, but I mention this because I do not accept the mitigation he was a kind and gentle man who helped out his friends in need.
Here, a human life has been lost unnecessarily over a trivial matter. It was not accidental. Nothing detracts from the sad fact that a man has lost his life.
This must be reflected in a sufficiently severe sentence. In particular, where there is no compelling mitigation, and I see no compelling mitigation here.
The court is under a duty to impose a punishment for unlawfully taking a life that is appropriate to the circumstances. There are no guidelines for manslaughter. Sentences for this offence are very case specific. This is a tragedy for all involved.
After considering all the circumstances, I intend to take a starting point of 15 years’ imprisonment. From the beginning, the defendant has indicated a plea to manslaughter. Therefore, he is entitled to a one-third discount to reflect that early plea. After a discount of 5 years is applied to that starting point, the defendant is sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.
Understand Mr Chiu?
ACCUSED: Yes, I do.