HKSAR v. CHIANG YAU SHING AND OTHERS

CACC 446/2000

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 446 OF 2000

(ON APPEAL FROM DCCC NO. 605 OF 2000)

______________

______________

_______________

J U D G M E N T

_______________

1. I refuse the Applicants leave to appeal against their convictions, but I wish to comment on two of the arguments raised by them. First, identification was not an issue in the case. What was in issue was what each of the persons present at the scene was supposed to have done. Thus, it was unnecessary for the judge to give himself a Turnbull direction. Moreover, an identification parade would not have been appropriate, and it was permissible for the station sergeant to ask the two undercover police officers, in the presence of the persons arrested but in the absence of each other, to state what each of the persons arrested had done, if anything. Secondly, although the Applicants plainly did not know that PW1 and PW2 were undercover police officers when PW1 and PW2 were assaulted, the Applicants could nevertheless be convicted on charges 8 and 9. That is because the offence of which three of them were convicted was not assaulting a police officer knowing him to be a police officer, but assaulting someone who was in fact a police officer: for that proposition, see Blackstone's Criminal Practice 2001, para. B2.26 and Archhold 2001, para. 19-275.