R. v. TSANG SUI and Others

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL

No. 62 of 1996
(Criminal)

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J U D G M E N T

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Liu, J.A. (giving the judgment of the Court):

1. All three Applicants, Tsang, Chan and Hon, faced a number of charges in the District Court. They were eventually found guilty of only one charge, that is to say, the charge of going equipped for stealing contrary to section 27 of the Theft Ordinance.

2. On the day in question, 28th May 1995 at a construction site, the Tak Shing Construction Site in Tsing Yi, the police waited in ambush. A lorry was driven by Hon from which Tsang and Chan alighted. Tsang and Chan had an instrument in their hands. They were both wearing gloves. On noticing the presence of police, they started to run and Hon started the car and intended to drive away. They were all stopped, and each of them made a verbal admission to the police that they went to the site with an intent to steal wooden boards. In addition, Hon admitted that he was the driver.

3. The articles found by the police apart from the lorry at the site were a bundle of three keys, two cutters, a wooden pole, nine pairs of gloves, a hammer, crow bar and also the gloves worn by Tsang and Chan.

4. Police officers gave conflicting evidence as to the distance over which the Defendants were chased before they were caught, the positions of each of the Applicants and the angle of the police car parked on the location. There was some inaccuracy in the sketch adduced at the trial. The judge took into consideration the circumstances in which these Applicants were apprehended and their verbal admissions but disregarded the discrepancies as peripheral. These Applicants were found guilty and sentenced accordingly. Each of them feels aggrieved and now seeks leave to appeal against their conviction.

5. There is no substance in their home-made grounds of appeal in the respective applications filed. The grounds stated are simply that the judge judged the case wrongly and that the sentence is too severe. Tsang repeats before us the discrepancies between the police officers. He focuses on the point that at the time when he was caught, one policeman said that he was 10-20 feet away, and another claimed that he was apprehended 2 or 3 steps from him. He also tells this Court that the lorry was parked by the roadway and that it should not have aroused police suspicion.

6. Chan also claims that there were inconsistencies in the police officers' evidence. It is said that he was just boarding the lorry when Mr. Hon was about to drive it away. He was in fact empty-handed, so he says. Evidently, he disputes the findings of the judge on which the verdict was returned.

7. Hon maintains before us that he was about to drive away, implying that his short pause near the construction site should have given no cause for suspicion. He also seeks to make capital of the inconsistencies in the evidence of police officers. And before the judge, it was submitted that despite the verbal confession of each of the Applicants, there was no evidence to establish whether or not there were any wooden boards at the site for stealing. The judge also considered the charge of a police frame-up. The discrepancies in the police evidence were not lost sight of by the court which on the evidence, including the verbal admissions of the Applicants, returned a verdict of guilty against each of them.

8. We have examined the records with care, as we anticipated the Applicants to act in person. We conclude that the verdicts against each of them cannot in any way be faulted. There is no substance in their grounds of appeal nor in the further submissions advanced to this Court by the Applicants today.

9. Their applications for leave to appeal against conviction must therefore be dismissed.