CRIMINAL CASE NO. 328 OF 2010
COURT: The defendant, a 47-year-old woman, was committed to this court for sentence following her plea of guilty in the Eastern Magistracy, before Mr Mierczak, to a charge of throwing corrosive fluid with intent, contrary to section 29(c) of the Offences against the Person Ordinance, Cap.212.
The facts of the case were that on 6 February of this year, the victim of the offence, a 16-year-old youth, lived at home in the room his family occupied on the 1st floor of a residential building in Hung Hom. There had apparently been some history of dispute between the victim and the defendant, who lived in a nearby room, over various matters, including the victim and his mother, according to the defendant, looking into the defendant’s room as they passed by. Other suchlike trivial matters had also caused tension between them.
On the day of the offence, the defendant had quarrelled with the victim and his mother. The defendant became angry. She obtained a bottle of sulphuric acid used as a drain cleaner from her flat, intending, she later told the police, to splash it against the front door of the victim’s flat.
At about this time, the victim returned home with a school friend. They went into the victim’s family flat and closed the front door behind them. As they did so, the victim’s friend heard the noise of liquid splashing against the outside of the door. He told the victim and the victim then opened the door and saw the defendant standing immediately outside. The defendant then splashed sulphuric acid from the bottle she held into the victim’s face and over his clothing.
PW1, the victim, sustained acid burns over his forehead, his face, around the surrounds of his eyes, though his eyes were not injured, his left ear, his mouth, neck and his hands. He spent 16 days in hospital having his injuries treated.
The defendant subsequently admitted to police she intended to cause the victim grievous bodily harm. The bottle containing the acid had a volume of about 500 cubic centimetres and, according to the defendant in her interviews with the police, had been two-thirds full. She apparently emptied the bottle during her attack on the victim. The defendant said that at the time of the attack, she did not know how many times she splashed the fluid on the victim.
The use of acid to injure another individual is, on any view, a particularly vicious act. The injuries to the victim are very often long-lasting and permanently damaging to that individual’s ability to live a normal life amongst others in the community. In the present case, the victim suffered severe burns. Fortunately, his eyes were not injured but that was more by chance rather than by the defendant in any way attempting to moderate the injuries she caused.
As of 8 December 2010, by the report of Dr Philip Leung Ho-kai, the victim has substantial scarring still over the left side of his face and neck. He has residual scarring of a more minor nature on his right wrist and leg. He is still undergoing treatment. His present level of scarring will likely not improve further, save that the pigmentation will lessen over time.
At the request of Mr Jim Chun-ki for the defendant, I ordered two psychiatric reports to be made available in respect of her. By those reports, one from Dr S H Lui and the other from Dr Amy Liu, both doctors agree that the defendant suffers, and has suffered for a number of years, from paranoid schizophrenia marked by persecutory delusions and auditory hallucinations. Dr Lui opines also that the defendant has experienced a deterioration in her impulse control. Both agree the defendant has displayed a propensity to violence but is now markedly improved since having been on medication whilst in custody.
Both doctors recommend that the defendant be made subject to a Hospital Order pursuant to section 45 of the Mental Health Ordinance and that it be limited to a further period of 4 months, resulting in the defendant being detained for a total of 10 months in Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre since her arrest. Provision has been made for her at that centre. She has been treated there since June of this year.
This is a finely balanced case. Such cases often are. On the one hand, the defendant is a paranoid schizophrenic and as such was suffering from a significant mental illness at the time of the attack. Such persons are precisely those to whom section 45 of the Mental Health Ordinance was intended by our legislature to apply. Inherent in the legislative purpose is a recognition that imprisonment simpliciter is not appropriate for persons who offend while mentally ill.
On the other hand, the offences committed by such individuals can be very serious and, in the normal course, be deserving of very heavy punishment. Perhaps the most significant factor in considering the community’s interest is the risk of persons such as the defendant committing similar offences in the future.
While, in the present case, the victim has suffered permanent and disfiguring scarring and in the normal course, a lengthy sentence of imprisonment, even after plea, would be appropriate, I accept, from the materials provided to me, that the defendant committed this offence while seriously mentally ill and therefore at a time when her responsibility for her actions was considerably reduced. For that reason, particularly as there seems to be realistic hope for her rehabilitation, she having not offended before, the better option is not of imprisonment but for her continuing treatment whilst in custody or under supervision.
Nevertheless, given her choice of sulphuric acid as a weapon against the victim and the nature of the injuries the use of acid as a weapon can inflict, I had considerable reservations whether a limited period of a further 4 months detention in a psychiatric centre before the defendant was moved elsewhere, likely to a mental hospital, would necessarily be sufficient for the purposes of protecting the public.
As a result of that concern, I had further inquiries made by Mr Jim as to the procedures adopted in respect of persons such as the defendant. Those inquiries had been made at the expense of some considerable effort by Mr Jim, for which I am grateful, and the position is that if I were to limit the period of the defendant’s detention in Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre to a further 4 months’ detention at that place, the defendant, in the circumstances of this case, would inevitably be then transferred to Castle Peak Mental Hospital and there her treatment would continue until a multi-disciplinary panel comprising medical practitioners, psychologists, social workers and others, deemed her rehabilitation to be such as to, at some future time, warrant her release.
In the circumstances of this case, given the defendant now has a history of violence, that release would likely be conditional and be subject to the available checks and balances contained in section 42B of the Mental Health Ordinance.
That section provides for, inter alia, the conditional release of persons such as the defendant, with the consent of the Chief Executive, into controlled premises, such as a halfway house, where she would live in a supervised environment and continue outpatient treatment and any prescribed course of medication. If, in those circumstances, she failed to comply with any condition imposed upon her, she could be recalled to detention in a mental hospital or, indeed, a psychiatric centre.
Accordingly, I am satisfied that the appropriate order to make in this case is an order under section 45 of the Mental Health Ordinance and I make that order in the following terms.
As I am satisfied on the written evidence of Dr Lui Sing-heung dated 13 December 2010 and Dr Liu Ching-yung, Amy, dated 8 December 2010, registered medical practitioners, that the said accused is a mentally disordered person and that the nature of the mental disorder from which she is suffering warrants her detention in a mental hospital for medical treatment, and I am of the opinion that the most suitable method of disposing of the case is by means of a Hospital Order under section 45 of the Mental Health Ordinance, I, in exercise of the powers conferred on me by the said section, order and authorise the admission of the said accused and her detention in Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre for a further period of 4 months from today.