HKSAR v. LEONARD LEUNG

CACC 64/2000

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 64 OF 2000

(ON APPEAL FROM DCCC 954 OF 1999)

______________

_______________

J U D G M E N T

_______________

Stuart-Moore VP (giving the judgment of the Court):

1. On 26 January 2000, the Applicant pleaded guilty in the District Court before Judge Toh to eleven charges of obtaining property by deception contrary to section 17(1) of the Theft Ordinance, Cap. 210. The judge imposed a total sentence of thirty-two months' imprisonment against which the Applicant now seeks leave to appeal.

2. The Applicant, aged 25, is a man with a bad previous character. He has been in and out of trouble since 1991, mainly regarding offences of dishonesty. The present offences were committed between 5 March 1998 and 29 March 1999. The Applicant rang up a number of suppliers of office equipment and, having accepted delivery of the equipment, paid with cheques which bounced.

3. The judge pointed out in her Reasons for Sentence that the Applicant had been given several chances when previously coming before the courts. There had been orders of probation, community service as well as prison sentences which had been suspended. The Applicant has also served various terms of imprisonment.

4. On 5 March 1999, he was given a suspended sentence of nine months' imprisonment for deception offences. Two of the offences in the series of deceptions which brought him before the District Court were committed in breach of that suspended sentence, indeed within days of it being imposed. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the judge, when ordering that the Applicant should go to prison for thirty-two months for the present series of offences, activated the suspended sentence with consecutive effect, leaving the Applicant with a total sentence of forty-one months to serve.

5. In his grounds of appeal, the Applicant referred us to a number of matters concerning his domestic situation all of which he should have thought about before becoming once more involved in dishonesty. On a more positive note, according to the Applicant, whilst serving previous sentences of imprisonment, he has been able to take an Open University degree in Social Sciences. He alleged also that he had qualified as a Professional Marketer with the Hong Kong Institute of Marketing. Furthermore, he alleged that he had enrolled for a Masters Degree in Business Administration and he alleged that his present sentence had delayed his progress with this. The Applicant stated that he had done a certain amount of voluntary work with prisoners at Pik Uk Correctional Services Institute when he was last released from that establishment in 1997.

6. His reason, or so he told us, for becoming yet again embroiled in dishonesty was that he became indebted to loan sharks and was left with no alternative but to resort to dishonesty as a way to repay them. Dealing with this aspect, this court has time and again said that resorting to crime to pay off loan sharks provides an explanation which carries little or no weight at all as mitigation.

7. Today in court, the Applicant has supplemented his grounds of appeal by providing the court with a number of additional documents. One of those documents purported to come from a health centre and was dated 14 March 2000. It was a photocopy and referred by name to the Applicant's mother. It is clear that she has medical problems which are being treated at the health centre. However, this document provides one demonstration amongst several which have been exposed in today's proceedings that the Applicant is prepared to produce material before a court which is untrue. The Applicant's mother is living, we quite accept that. But amongst the other documents which he has provided us with was a previous probation report, made in February 1999, where the details supplied by the Applicant to the probation officer were false. It describes how the Applicant's mother passed away at the age of 64 in 1998. We have not been provided with any relevant document that helps the Applicant at all.

8. Although the present offences involved over $210,000 worth of goods, and despite the fact that the Applicant had such a long criminal record, the judge nevertheless considered it necessary to obtain reports as to the Applicant's mental condition and background. In those reports, as the judge noted, the Applicant was described as "self-sufficient and manipulative". We have also noted that the Applicant was described as giving the appearance of being "sophisticated and articulate in speech". We can add from our own observations that he is also well practised in the art of deception.

9. The sentence in its overall effect cannot be criticised. There is no merit whatsoever to this application and it is dismissed. We shall, because it has been a wholly unmeritorious application, order that four months of the time the Applicant has spent in custody awaiting this hearing shall not count towards his sentence.