|
HCCC310/2008
IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE
HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION
COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE
CRIMINAL CASE NO. 310 OF 2008
----------------------
----------------------
| Before |
Deputy High Court Judge D Pang |
| Date: |
24 February 2009 at 9.58 am |
| Present: |
Mr Wong Wing-sum, Vincent, SPP of the Department
of Justice, for HKSAR
Mr Chan W S, Raymond, assigned by the Legal Aid Department, for the Accused
|
| Offence: |
Robbery, etc. (搶劫等罪) |
Transcript of the Audio Recording
of the Sentence in the above case
COURT: Defendant, please stand.
The defendant has pleaded guilty before a magistrate
to two counts of robbery, Count 1 and 2, and one count of assault with intend
to rob, Count 3. He appears before me now for sentence.
The facts of the case are simple. At 1.30 am,
on 13 May 2008, on the ground floor of a public housing estate, the defendant
grabbed the neck of a 16 year old girl from behind, threatened her with a knife
and took from her one purse, one necklace and one mobile phone.
Half an hour later, at a bus stop outside another
public housing estate, he picked on a 44-year-old woman and snatched from her
a mobile phone she was using, thus causing her pain.
Then, at 11.30 the same morning, he turned on his
third victim, again a woman in her mid-40s, and tried to snatch her necklace,
only to be stopped by some police nearby.
The defendant is aged 22. He is Vietnamese,
and virtually nothing is known about him for certain. He does not live
in Hong Kong and does not have any previous convictions in Hong Kong.
In a written plea for leniency, the appellant claims
that he sneaked into Hong Kong on the advice of some compatriot. Why?
Because what he would earn by committing a crime and getting prison wages here
would be a lot more than what he can get from work in Vietnam. There is
some support in what he says because, according to the agreed facts, the defendant
committed Count 3, his last act, in full view of the police. However,
elsewhere in his letter the defendant did say that after two days of roughing
it out in Hong Kong he was, I quote, “At a dead end and had no other way but
to rob stuff to look for food or sell it to buy food.”
In other words, he committed the first two offences
for gain, and for that matter picked the time, place and no doubt easy targets
for easy execution and escape. Either way, I do not think the claim to
wanting to go to prison here amounts to any mitigation. Nor could defence
counsel provide any authority to support that contention. Whatever the
motive, those were still crimes committed on completely innocent victims.
Besides, giving weight to that claim would give the defendant the unwarranted
benefit of both the prison wages and a shorter than normal sentence.
For Count 1, the proper starting point is 6 years’
imprisonment. For Count 2, it is 12 months. For Count 3, again 12
months. Because of the guilty pleas they will be reduced to 4 years 8
months and 8 months respectively.
Taking into account the totality principle, a cap
at 4 years and 8 months will be appropriate. In order that that may be
achieved, I order the sentences in Count 2 and 3 to be concurrent but consecutive
to that in Count 1.
|