COURT: No one hearing the facts of this case could be in any doubt at all that the violence you inflicted on the deceased with your bare hands and feet was anything short of the most extreme kind. In fact, you have always admitted using the maximum force that you could muster when you beat her. In speaking to the police, the expression was used “10 out of 10 on a scale of 1 to 10”.
This was done with monotonous regularity. In the week that she died, the deceased was assaulted by you on the five occasions leading up to and including 9 September 2011, when she eventually died, and I am also satisfied that this kind of conduct had been going on, to some degree at least, from early August.
As if you needed, at your age, to be warned by your mother that this might lead to something terrible happening, you took no notice of her.
The deceased was completely helpless against you. You have a far bigger build, both in weight and in height, than she. She offered no resistance beyond trying to protect herself with her arms, which were found to be covered in bruises just like the rest of her body.
You knew that the deceased was in some degree mentally retarded and she was unable to do things for herself which other people can usually do without any difficulty, but in spite of knowing her difficulties, you bullied her day after day.
These were very cowardly and extremely vicious assaults. The internal injuries speak for themselves. No less than 19 out of her 24 ribs were fractured. The sharp edges of some of those ribs had torn the right lung in four places, which led to the collapse, or partial collapse, of her lung. There was brain concussion, as evidenced by a subdural haemorrhage. You broke both of her shoulder blades, and that is quite apart from the 78 groups of injury found on the external examination of her body when Dr Yim carried out the autopsy on 10 September 2011.
The extent of these injuries is truly staggering, and all of this was brought on by your terrible temper. You have admitted that to the police and you have admitted it to Dr Anita Leung. You have no mental disorder. That is extremely well documented. Not only do I have Dr Leung’s report, albeit she was heavily discredited in this trial; much more significantly, I have the report of Dr Amy Liu, which is a very recent one, following her earlier report of 23 February last year. She is a highly qualified psychiatrist, and as you know from the reports she has made, both of them, you suffer from no psychiatric illness, and that is not disputed.
But when your temper is raised, there can be no doubt at all that you turn into a really dangerous person.
As Mr Arthur as said, there is only one sentence for murder, and I sentence you to life imprisonment.