The offences were committed within two days and all targeted at the so-called “one-woman brothel”. The first two offences were committed on 27 April 2018 and the others were committed on 28 April 2018. On each occasion, the defendant visited a one-woman brothel and after he was allowed entrance, he took out a knife from his rucksack and threatened the victim, who were all women alone in the premises, for money.
In the robbery, in respect of Charge 1, the defendant took HK$1,000 and a mobile phone from the victim. For the 2nd and 3rd charges, the defendant did not get anything, as the victims had no money. For the 4th charge, the victim was able to escape out from her premises during the robbery and in the attempt to stop the victim from escaping, the defendant had once grabbed the victim from behind.
The defendant was later traced by the police and on the arrest of the defendant, the defendant admitted to have committed the subject offences.
The defendant is now 26 years old. He was born in Guangzhou and received education in Hong Kong up to Form 1 level. Before his arrest, he was a transportation worker. He has 19 criminal convictions with no robbery cases involved. He has, however, committed theft and attempted theft in 2004 and 2005 respectively, taking conveyance without authority in 2015 and obtaining property by deception in 2017.
According to Mr Chau, counsel for the defendant, the defendant committed the present offences because he has no money to pay for his rent. In mitigation, Mr Chau submitted two medical reports to court to prove that the defendant suffered tuberculosis meningitis in his very young age, results which complicated with bilateral lower limb paralysis and nocturnal enuresis. The defendant was assessed by clinical psychologist in 2002 and his intelligence functioning was assessed to be within the range of low/average intelligence.
Mr Chau also produced a copy of a cheque in the amount of HK$8,000, payable to the victim in the 1st charge, as restitution to her loss. Mr Chau submitted that the defendant’s early plea of guilty, his early admission to have committed the offences and the restitution he made, showed that the defendant is now very remorseful.
Now robbery and attempted robbery are very serious offences. In Mo Kwong Sang v R [1981] HKLR 610, the Court of Appeal had laid down the guideline for sentence for robbery offences. In an ordinary case of armed robbery, where the defendant has carried a knife which he displayed to his victim, the starting point for sentence should be 5 years’ imprisonment, before taking into account other aggravating factors.
As rightly pointed out by Mr Chau, in the present case there are aggravating factors, including that the robberies were targeted at women in the one‑woman brothel who are in a vulnerable position and the defendant has committed four offences in the period of two days.
In HKSAR v Zhang Wei, acknowledging that targeting at one‑woman brothel is an aggravating factor the Court of Appeal adopted a starting point of 9 years’ imprisonment for sentencing. But in that case the defendant used a syringe for the robbery, threatening that the syringe contained his blood and he has AIDS and in that case, the defendant did stab the victim with the syringe.
In the present case, taking into account the aforementioned aggravating factors, I would adopt a starting point of 8 years’ imprisonment for each of the charges.
I am aware that the 2nd to 4th charges are attempted robberies, but I am of the view that it makes no difference in sentencing.
I will accord a full discount for the defendant’s plea of guilty and reduce the sentence of each charge to 64 months’ imprisonment. In view of the personal circumstances of the defendant, and the fact that he had made restitution to the victim, I will further reduce the sentence of each charge to 60 months’ imprisonment. That is a reduction of 4 months.
Now the four offences were separate offences and the sentence of them should, in principle, run consecutively. However, considering the totality of sentence, I would order that 4 months of the sentence of Charges 2, 3 and 4, to run consecutively to the sentence of Charge 1 and all other sentence to run concurrently.
The result is that the defendant has to serve a total period of 72 months, which is 6 years’ imprisonment for the four offences.