R. v. LEE KAN KEUNG

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J U D G M E N T

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Fuad, V.-P. (giving the judgment of the court):

1. The applicant, Lee Kan Keung, appeared in the High Court on an indictment charging him with murder. On 8th October 1991, before Wong, J., the prosecution accepted a plea of guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of provocation. On the same day he was sentenced to 3 1/2 years imprisonment and he now seeks leave to appeal against his sentence.

2. The facts accepted by the applicant when he pleaded guilty were as follows: the deceased man and the applicant had been living together on the 12th floor of a building as co-tenants of cubicles for the past ten years or so. In the early hours of the morning of 13th October 1990 a neighbour who lived in the next door house heard the sound of the two men quarrelling. The witness looked through a spy hole of the main door into the corridor where the cubicles occupied by the applicant and the deceased were, and saw the applicant come out, naked to the waist, and take a lift to the ground floor. Since the neighbour had often heard quarrels taking place between them, he took no further notice of the matter. Shortly afterwards the police received a 999 call from the applicant himself telling them that someone had been wounded and was about to die on the 12th floor of No. 26 Boundary Street.

3. The police rushed to the scene and found the applicant standing on the pavement in the street outside the building. He had blood all over his face and his body. He admitted that he had been involved in a fight with his co-tenant who was lying injured on the 12th floor. He told the police on that occasion that his co-tenant had chopped him but a later medical examination showed that the only injuries the applicant had on him were a bruise and laceration over his left eye, and a superficial laceration on one of his fingers. There were certainly no injuries consistent with his having been chopped.

4. The applicant appeared to be faint and dizzy and so the police sent him to hospital by ambulance. When they reached the 12th floor they saw the deceased lying on his back with a stab wound in his chest. He was certified dead on his arrival at the hospital. A post-mortem examination showed that he had died of the stab wound in his chest and that he also had some bruises and abrasions on his body and limbs.

5. The applicant was arrested and asked about what had happened. Under caution he admitted that there had been an argument saying that it had arisen because the deceased had gone on playing chess with a friend until the early hours of the morning, and had made such a noise that he, the applicant, could not get to sleep. He told the police that the deceased had threatened him with a chopper and punched him in the eye, whereupon he had pushed the deceased away, grabbed a knife and stabbed him.

6. The applicant is aged now about 35 and he was a casual worker at the time of his arrest. He had a minor previous conviction for assault occasioning actual bodily harm in 1979, when he was fined.

7. The applicant was represented by leading counsel before the judge and a powerful plea of mitigation was made on his behalf. Counsel stressed that the applicant had no intention of causing the death of his friend, that he was full of remorse and that he wished counsel to state publicly how sorry he was about what had happened. Counsel also dealt with his personal circumstances pointing out that he had been consistently in work and that he was a respectable citizen. Counsel added that the applicant appreciated that manslaughter was a very serious charge.

8. In passing sentence, Wong, J. took into account all the matters that had been raised on behalf of the applicant. He said that he regarded it as a sad case since the applicant and the deceased had been sharing accommodation for many years and had originally come from the same village in China. The judge also accepted that when the applicant killed the deceased he was acting under considerable provocation and had no intention of killing his friend.

9. We have carefully considered the grounds of appeal filed by the applicant. There is no merit in them. Some of the grounds he raises lie ill with the submissions made on his behalf by leading counsel. In his grounds of appeal the applicant went so far as to accuse the prosecution of having been. "fraudulent". This certainly was a tragic case but the deceased was killed by an extremely violent act with a deadly weapon. We do not think that the sentence was a day too long. The application is therefore refused.