HKSAR v. WONG WAI MAN

CACC 41/2000

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 41 OF 2000

(ON APPEAL FROM DCCC 1007 OF 1999)

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J U D G M E N T

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Stuart-Moore VP (giving the judgment of the Court):

1. On 11 January 2000, the Applicant pleaded guilty in the District Court before Judge Wright and was sentenced to two year's imprisonment for domestic burglary. She now seeks leave to appeal against her sentence on the ground that the judge failed to take sufficiently into account mitigating factors such as the absence of tools to gain access to the premises, the fact that no violence was used, that she was cooperative throughout, that she has no previous conviction for anything of a similar nature to this, and that drug dependency was the root cause of her offence.

2. Whilst it is true that this 23-year-old Applicant was, at the time of the commission of the offence, dependent on drugs, she had, as the judge noted, failed to respond to the treatment offered to her at the Drug Addiction Treatment Centre following the two previous occasions she had attended the centre after being convicted of offences relating to drugs.

3. The judge, having considered all the relevant features in mitigation, saw no reason to depart from the well settled guidelines relating to sentence for this kind of offence and, in coming to this conclusion, it is clear that he was fully aware of the matters raised in her grounds of appeal by the Applicant. What the Applicant had done was to climb up scaffolding during daylight hours to enter the second floor flat which she burgled in Shun Ning Road. She was fully aware of what she was doing as she had covered her fingers in adhesive tapes to avoid detection through fingerprints.

4. We can find no merit whatsoever in this application and it is dismissed. As the application was wholly without merit, we shall order that two months of the time the Applicant has spent in custody shall not count towards her sentence.