HKSAR v. YIP SAU KING

CACC 380/1999

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 380 OF 1999

(ON APPEAL FROM HCCC NO. 23 OF 1999)

____________________________________

_______________________________

________________

J U D G M E N T

________________

Hon Stock JA (giving the judgment of the Court):

1 This applicant seeks leave to appeal out of time against sentence. In fact she has previously abandoned her appeal against sentence and it was accordingly dismissed. So, in effect, what she asks of this Court is to be allowed to treat that abandonment as a nullity.

2 In July 1999, the applicant pleaded guilty to trafficking in 1.3 kilogrammes of heroin, and was sentenced to a term of 13 years' imprisonment. On 21 July 1999 she filed a notice of application for leave to appeal against sentence and she said, in that notice, as a sole ground, that she had a brother in Australia who was ill. In October 1999, after she was refused legal aid, she gave notice of abandonment of her application for leave to appeal against sentence. Her current application is dated 16 January 2002. In it, she says that some months previously she came to know that her sister has a brain tumour, and that her mother is very ill. She wants to return home to take care of her family. As to why she abandoned her application in 1999, she says that it was a deliberate decision because she thought that she should be accountable for her crime. In her oral submissions today, she says that she would like to look after her younger sister and her mother, and to make a contribution to her family, and she explains allegedly difficult circumstances which attach to the lives of her younger sister and mother.

3 It will be evident that there is no basis upon which to allow the applicant to reopen her application. Her decision in 1999 was a fully informed decision. The matters which she now raises are matters which she is entitled, if she wishes, to take up with the Executive, but they are not matters for this Court. We would only say that the sentence itself was lenient, as she apparently realises.

4 The application, accordingly, is dismissed.