HKSAR v. LUN CHING YEE

DCCC807/2011

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

CRIMINAL CASE NO. 807 OF 2011

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Reasons for Sentence

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1.  Defendant, you have pleaded guilty to 14 charges of theft, contrary to section 9 of the Theft Ordinance, Cap. 210, Laws of Hong Kong, the offences taking place, as they did, between 27 July 2010, which is the date of the commission of the 1st offence, through to 28 April of this year when the last offence was committed and when you were eventually intercepted by the police.

2.  All of the offences concerned the theft of expensive items from retail outlets, mainly in Kowloon, involving cameras, camera lenses and cosmetics.  In virtually each of the thefts your modus operandi was to distract the attention of the particular sales person after the item had been shown to you.  When the salesperson’s attention had been distracted you would take the product and indicate typically that you had left your bankcard in your car.  You would then leave the retail outlets concerned, but of course not return.

3.  The total value of these items taken by you amounted to $284,264.  Many of the items stolen by yourself have been recovered either from your home or the warehouse that you maintained in Yuen Long. 

4.  You are 33 years of age and divorced.  You have 23 previous convictions for theft or theft-related offences dating back to 1995.  You have received psychiatric treatment since 1998, and from the psychiatric reports made available to me I am aware that you suffer from kleptomania. However, the most recent reports from the two psychiatrists that I ordered two weeks ago both now indicate that your condition has improved significantly with treatment, and neither doctor considers a hospital order to be necessary.  I therefore decline to make a hospital order. 

5.  A prison sentence in your case is unavoidable due to your persistence in offending which is evidenced by your criminal record. You have been imprisoned on a number of occasions in the past for offences of this nature, and I note in particular that in the year 2000 you were sentenced to a term of 2 years' imprisonment in relation to 15 charges of theft. 

6.  Taking everything into account I adopt a starting point in relation to each of these charges of 4½ years' imprisonment.  I will discount that by one-third to take account of your plea of guilty to the charges, coming to 3 years' imprisonment on each charge.  To reflect the fact that the commission of these offences was influenced to some degree by the psychiatric disorder you were suffering from at the time, I am prepared to give you a further discount of 6 months, arriving at a sentence of 2½ years' imprisonment in relation to each of the charges. 

7.  Due to the question of totality of sentence I order these sentences to run concurrently with each other.