HKSAR v. KWAN WING WONG

HCMA1126/98

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

(Appellate Jurisdiction)

MAGISTRACY APPEAL NO. 1126 OF 1998

(On appeal from SPCC 6462 of 1998)

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J U D G M E N T

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1. The appellant pleaded guilty at San Po Kong before a magistrate, for the offence of possession of a forged travel document, and was sentenced by the magistrate to 15 months' imprisonment at first, and then on review to 10 months.

2. The facts of the case are simply that on 1 October 1998 the defendant arrived from Thailand with the intention to connect a flight to Australia, but was stopped by the airline staff as doubt was cast on the authenticity of his Republic of China passport. Under examination the passport was revealed to be a forgery, and the 1st defendant paid HK$50,000 for that.

3. The learned magistrate in his reasons for sentence after considering his own experience and from the data from the Immigration Department, he opinionated that how many such offenders had escaped the law is hard to assess, and that the data obtained is only the tip of an iceberg. And he also considered the income derived from this illegal activity to be enormous, and that those people had brought a stigma to Hong Kong and to China. There is no evidence to substantiate his opinion.

4. I am of the view that each case has to be considered according to the facts of each case. It is not appropriate to consider the magistrate's past experience and the data from the Immigration, nor was it appropriate to consider how much money people made from these sort of illegal activities.

5. There is no unusual feature in this case which warrants or justifies a departure from the normal sentence, nor is this case one which justifies a deterrent sentence. The normal tariff for this sort of offence according to the previous appeal cases is 6 months, and there are no unusual features which justifies a departure from those sentences laid down to similar offences. And the appeal against sentence is therefore allowed to the extent that the 10 months' imprisonment will be reduced to 6 months.