THE QUEEN v. CHIU PING KEI

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL

No. 433 of 1987
(Criminal)

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J U D G M E N T

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Barnett, J.

1. In the Court below the appellant pleaded guilty to what are commonly called lift robberies. He pleaded guilty to five such counts. The use of a knife was involved and in all cases women were encountered although in one of the charges, a man was also a victim.

2. The appellant was caught as he was decamping from the scene of the robbery which was the subject of the first count. After being taken into custody, he confessed to being involved in the other four counts. Those other four counts had, of course, been offences committed at an earlier time.

3. The judge, after hearing the mitigation to which Miss Leong has referred us, adopted a global approach and after saying that the appropriate sentence would be ten years' imprisonment, deducted from that approximately 30% and passed a sentence of 7 years. He passed a sentence of 7 years in respect of each charge, the sentences to run concurrently.

4. The sole ground of appeal is that the learned trial judge erred in adopting the sentence of 10 years' imprisonment as the appropriate tariff upon which to base his calculation. We are agreed, I think, that if the case had gone to trial, the appropriate sentence for each of these charges would have been about 5 years' imprisonment.

5. For the appellant, Miss Leong says that taking this into account, it is not clear how the trial judge arrived at a global sum of 10 years. If the trial judge had been minded to pass consecutive sentences (as he could properly have done because the offences are all separate transactions) then the total period of imprisonment would be some 25 years and if he had scaled down from 25 years to 7 years, that would have been a very very considerable discount. On the other hand, said Miss Leong, he may have taken a starting figure of five years for the first charge and then added on a certain amount for each of the other charges. If that is the approach which was adopted, said Miss Leong, then the original five years has been doubled to ten years and that is too much of an addition.

6. In our view, it does not matter very greatly which approach was adopted by the judge. We incline to the view that, in all probability, he started at a total sentence of 25 years and then using his experience, as Mr. Harris has suggested, decided in all the circumstances what was the appropriate figure. We think that that is the preferable approach to adopt in cases where there are multiple separate offences. Taking into account the nature of the robberies, lift robberies, and taking into account the mitigation, which is really only that the accused pleaded guilty, we cannot say that the judge was wrong in coming to a global figure of 10 years and reducing, that as he did, by 30%. We see no merit in this appeal and it is accordingly dismissed.