R. v. LI ON

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL

1994, No. 502
(Criminal)

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J U D G M E N T

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Hon Yang, C.J.:

1. The applicant was convicted after trial of five charges of blackmail and a number of charges of theft which mirrored the blackmail charges. He was further convicted of one charge of attempted theft.

2. In his application for leave to appeal against conviction, he advanced certain grounds in his homemade Grounds of Appeal which comprised four points, namely: (1) the trial judge "failed to consider the doubts of the witness"; (2) the prosecution party could not prove that he "had the intention of intimidation and blackmail"; (3) he would put forward "more grounds of appeal" when the Court of Appeal heard the case; (4) "the evidence of the prosecution party was self-contradictory".

3. This morning, the applicant asked for an adjournment saying that as he had been detained in Shek Pik Correctional Centre, his lawyer failed to go to that Centre to see him and also the lawyer had recently been dismissed. He knew about this on 24 or 25 of last month. The applicant claimed that there had been insufficient time for him to engage another lawyer to assist him.

4. When we refused to grant him the adjournment asked for, he had nothing to add to his homemade Grounds of Appeal except to repeat his request that he be permitted legal representation after an adjournment. After we had made it quite plain to him that we were not disposed to grant an adjournment, he had nothing further to say.

5. The facts of the case need be very briefly stated. The victims of the blackmail and theft were mother and son. The son was a 14-year old boy who was accosted by the applicant and a number of others at an amusement park. For some reasons which we need not go into, this boy was induced to go to a certain apartment with the applicant and the others, amongst whom was a teenage girl. In the apartment, the girl and the son slept in the same bed; there was no suggestion that any sexual activity took place. Because of this episode, the son was accused of taking away the girlfriend of one the applicant's friends. It was because of this incident that the blackmail and the theft occurred.

6. Each time, the son or the mother was threatened with assault to the son, and there were also threats that they, i.e. the applicant and his friends, would report the son's "crime" to the police. Large sums of money were asked for, and a total of $916,000 was paid over as a result of these demands.

7. The judge dealt with the evidence with care and considered each charge and the case of the applicant and his accused separately. There is nothing in the Reasons for Verdict which induces us to doubt the correctness of the verdicts reached.

8. The application for leave to appeal against convictions is therefore dismissed.