HKSAR v. TSE CHI SHING

HCCC 443/2013

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CRIMINAL CASE NO 443 OF 2013

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Transcript of the Audio Recording

of the Sentence in the above Case

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COURT: You have been found guilty of two counts of murder after trial. You have also pleaded guilty to a charge of robbery. All three of those offences arose on 13 December 2012 when you went to a flat in the building in which you lived. Having taken drugs with a friend of yours, you then went to search the building to see if there were any rooms where the doors were left open.

You went into Room 1807 where, when you entered, you found Madam Ip lying on the bed. You knew she was elderly: you accepted that in the course of your evidence. You may or may not have known that for a couple of years she had been partly crippled. It was obvious from the photographs that we have seen of that room that Madam Ip and Mr Tsui were living a modest life. She was lying on the bed, heard you enter and challenged you to find out what you were doing there.

It is accurate to say that you then launched a very serious, and ultimately deadly, attack on that old woman lying on her bed. You hit her about the face. Indeed, you described yourself, eventually, as having “smashed her in the face” a number of times. You did so with sufficient force as to break bones in her eye socket and to cause bleeding in her brain. You broke bones in one wrist and one hand; you broke her ribs. Apart from any question of pain, this must have been an absolutely terrifying experience for this woman, and this you did so as you could steal from her.

Her husband - a man of 82, not, from the closed-circuit television photographs that we have seen, a big, strong or hearty man but, rather, a man of many years carrying an umbrella returning home to cook the evening meal for his wife. He walked in and you set about him.

It is quite clear from the unanimous verdict, insofar as Madam Ip was concerned, that the jury accepted entirely the medical evidence. You were found guilty by a majority in respect of the husband.

It is clear from the medical evidence that we all heard in respect of him that you launched an attack on him as well. His injuries might not have been as quite as extensive as his wife’s, but they proved fatal a lot earlier. He died within about 38 hours of your attacking him.

Madam Ip lived a few weeks longer. The medical diagnosis of her death was bronchopneumonia. The evidence is that she went into a decline in hospital when she learned of her husband’s death. At her age, that is hardly surprising.

And all this to enable you to steal from these two old people.

It is not, in my view, the slightest exaggeration, looking at your criminal record, to describe yours as a life that has been wasted on crime and drugs. You have now wasted these old people’s lives in the sunset of their lives.

Looking at the nature of the robbery and the violence which you wrecked on them, but ignoring the fact that you actually killed them because that will be addressed in the sentences for the two murders, it seems to me that the appropriate starting point after trial on the 1st count of robbery would be one of 9 years imprisonment.

These were domestic premises; it was early in the evening; you yourself said that with the front door being open you anticipated that there may still be people present inside the premises. It would have been open to you, once you walked in and saw Madam Ip lying there, to turn around and walk out. But you chose to turn what could have been a walk-in burglary into a full-scale robbery.

Perhaps one of the low points of this trial was your own admission that once Mr Tsui had been disabled, on whatever basis, you then stole from his pockets.

You pleaded guilty to Count 1, you are entitled to a one‑third discount. Consequently, on Count 1, you are to serve 6 years imprisonment. Each of Counts 2 and 3 carry mandatory terms of life imprisonment. On Count 2, you are sentenced to imprisonment for life. On Count 3, you are sentenced to imprisonment for life.

Obviously, all those sentences are to be served concurrently with one another.