HKSAR v. HUI SAI ON

DCCC 313/2014

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

CRIMINAL CASE NO 313 OF 2014

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Reasons for Sentence

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1.  Defendant, you have pleaded guilty to two charges of burglary, contrary to Section 11(1)(b) and (4) of the Theft Ordinance, cap 210.

2.  The two burglaries took place a week apart.  Both involved the same shopping centre, the Hunghom Commercial Centre in Hunghom, Kowloon, and both burglaries involved non-domestic premises.

3.  The facts are as follows.  The first burglary took place on 20 January 2014.  PW1 had a shop at No 99 of this commercial centre and that morning he left his shop having put his mobile phone on a chair, but not before he locked the glass doors.  CCTV footage shows that 5 minutes after he left you prised open the glass doors, entered his shop and left very quickly thereafter.  When PW1 returned he found the lock of his door tampered with and his phone taken from the chair.

4.  A week later you committed the second offence and the victim of Shop 53 had locked his premises on the night of 27 January.  You broke in during the early hours of the morning, ransacked his premises but found nothing of value to steal.  When the break-in was discovered, the victim received a phone call to come back to the shopping centre.  He found the lock of the glass doors had been tampered with and his shop ransacked.  He confirmed that nothing was taken.

5.  You were arrested less than two weeks later. You admitted both offences to the police.

6.  Your best mitigation today is your plea of guilty.  You are 40 years and not a man with a clear record.  You have many, many previous convictions, including some involving offences of dishonesty.

7.  You are married, with a wife in Mainland China.  You do have, in Hong Kong, two children with a girlfriend you cohabit with.  Both are students.

8.  I have been told that your profession is one of a plumber and before these offences you were employed on a casual basis.

9.  You told the police, and it is recorded in your antecedent that you took the dangerous drug, “Ice”, and have been taking it since 2013.

10.  You told the police under caution when you were arrested that you were looking for something of value to steal because you were short of money.  I note that you did, once you were arrested, cooperate with the police and admit the offences.

11.  Sentencing guidelines do exist for burglary offences and where a premise is a non-domestic premise and where there are no particular mitigating or aggravating factors that exist, the court should take a 2½ year starting point.  Having considered the facts of this case, there are no mitigating or aggravating factors that I see.  I will take into account your plea, the facts of the case, loss suffered by the victims, mitigation put forward on your behalf.  I will take a starting point of two years and six months for each charge.

12.  You have pleaded guilty and you are entitled to a discount of one-third.  For both offences, you are sentenced to 1 year and 8 months’ imprisonment.  I take into account the totality principle and for Charge 2, I will order that 4 months of that sentence be served consecutively to Charge 1 and the balance concurrent.  Therefore, total sentence is one of 2 years’ imprisonment.