HKSAR v. LAM CHI KWONG

CACC 394/2000

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 394 OF 2000

(ON APPEAL FROM HCCC NO. 76 OF 2000)

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J U D G M E N T

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Keith JA (giving the judgment of the Court):

1. The Applicant was charged with the murder of his girlfriend. He pleaded not guilty. He was tried in the Court of First Instance by Nguyen J and a jury. After a trial lasting six days, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to imprisonment for life. He now applies for leave to appeal against his conviction.

2. The Applicant did not dispute that his girlfriend had died at his hands after she had told him that she would not go out with him anymore. He had stabbed her three times with a knife, twice in the back and then once in the chest. The wounds were deep, and the evidence of the pathologist was that a substantial amount of force had been used. She had died as a result of her injuries. Nor did the Applicant dispute that his attack on her had been unlawful. He did not say, for example, that he had attacked her in self-defence or that his stabbing of her had been accidental.

3. The only issues at the trial were whether the Applicant had intended either to kill her or to cause her really serious bodily injury, and whether the Applicant had been provoked into stabbing her. The judge's directions to the jury on these two issues, as well as his other directions, were impeccable. He supplemented those directions with written aide-memoires which were distributed to the jurors. They were impeccable as well. Indeed, Mr Paul Dinan for the Applicant (who did not represent him at his trial) does not suggest otherwise. He has not felt able to advance any grounds of appeal on behalf of the Applicant

4. We have carefully read the whole of Nguyen J's summing-up to the jury to satisfy ourselves that there are no grounds of appeal. We have not been able to discern any. It follows that the Applicant's application for leave to appeal against his conviction must be dismissed.

5. Today the Applicant told us that since he killed his girlfriend on the spur of the moment, his punishment should not have been as great as it was. However, the sentence of life imprisonment for murder is a mandatory one, and it is not one with which the court can interfere.