HKSAR v. HUANG NANHUA

HCCC11/2009

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CRIMINAL CASE NO. 11 OF 2009

 -----------------

          -----------------

 ---------------------------------------------

Transcript of the Audio Recording
of the Sentence in the above Case

 ---------------------------------------------

COURT:  Anyone guilty of conduct that threatens a public figure because of his participation in either politics or his profession commits a grave crime.  If the threat involves a firearm, they will face a long sentence of imprisonment.

     The criminal courts of Hong Kong will not tolerate men like you with guns at their side coming here to target such people in order, to use your words, to teach them a lesson.  I have no doubt that at the least, Martin Lee was the object of your criminal attention.

     No court will know the motive of those who paid you, but common sense tells one that it must relate either to his politics or his profession.  The rule of law exists here to regulate both.  The prospect of opponents in either setting settling their grievances, real or imagined, by hiring men like you to do organised personal violence damages the fabric of our society and casts a shadow on our freedom and security.  No one must fear for their safety by reason of their legitimate political activity or their representation of citizens in our courts.

     Thanks to a sharp-eyed woman police constable at a roadblock, you were caught at an early stage.  The consequence is that the prosecution cannot establish exactly what was planned.  You described to the police teaching someone a lesson.

     The verdict of the jury establishes that you intended an arrestable offence of a kind that involved violence, whether by the deliberate infliction of injury or in the course of some kind of abduction or restraint, or both.

     It was not necessary, in order to secure your conviction for carrying a firearm with criminal intent, to prove that you intended to use it in furtherance of the intended arrestable offence.  However, on the evidence, I find the possession of the pistol and the plan to be related.  Why else carry the pistol whilst you went about executing the plan?  Why else have live ammunition for it?  And why else would your boss, as you revealed, speak of disposing of it after the job was done by throwing it into the sea?

     I cannot find, on the evidence, that your settled intention was that someone be shot, but I do find that you contemplated the use of a loaded pistol as and when the occasion arose in the execution of the plan.

     It must be understood that the prosecution never set out to prove a plot to assassinate anyone, and that your sentence is not passed on that basis.  If such an intent had been proved, your sentence would obviously have been significantly longer. 

     I deal with you on the basis that you intended to commit a serious crime involving violence to the person of Martin Lee.  The exact nature of that violence does not matter.  However, the evidence of what you told the police indicated a high level of threat to him, as you spoke of injury and wounding in a context of not putting him to death.

     I remember the evidence that suggested that the two men whom you were recruiting may have declined the enterprise, but you did not know for sure, and your intended action of returning to your boss in the mainland, leaving the pistol and bullets available to you here, indicated willing intent to continue the plan.

     Nonetheless, my sentence does acknowledge the prospect that the plan may have come to nothing, though not through any scruple on your part.

     There is no significant mitigation.  You turned your back on the substantial discount available for an honest plea of guilty.

     If you had been convicted of possession of the arms and ammunition without a licence, you would have faced a starting point for sentence of 12 years’ imprisonment, such is the abhorrence these courts have of firearms in the wrong hands.

     Your sentence must be the greater for your criminal intent aggravates it, as recognised by the different maximum sentence.  However, I appreciate that the mischief of the pistol in your case is much absorbed by the initial 12 years of the sentence in contemplation.

     16 years’ imprisonment is a long sentence for a crime that was foiled at an early stage and where no direct injury was suffered by the intended victim.  However, the presence of the pistol with the live bullets, taken with the gravity of the criminal intent, as I endeavoured to describe at the outset of this sentence, demand no less a term.

     Conduct such as yours injures us all.  The public will not tolerate it.  It is bound to attract such a deterrent sentence. 

     You will go to prison for 16 years.