COURT: You are convicted on your own plea of two counts of robbery which occurred on 17 and 29 August 2012.
On the first occasion you went into a shop that deals in postage stamps, talked to the owner and eventually threw pepper into his eyes, grabbed an album of approximately 700 stamps and ran off.
Twelve days later you went into a shop dealing in antique bank notes, again talked to the owner, threw pepper into his eyes, grabbed some 222 bank notes and ran off with those. The owner of that shop was able to chase you. He was assisted by a security guard into whose eyes you threw pepper to make good your escape. All but 49 of those bank notes were recovered.
A few days later, on 3 September, you went to try to sell some bank notes to another dealer. He became suspicious of you and notified the owner of the bank note shop from which you had previously stolen. He alerted the police and accompanied them to the shop where you were trying to sell the bank notes where he was able to identify you. You were subsequently also identified by the owner of the shop from which you had stolen the stamps.
When you were arrested for robbery you made an immediate admission to the police. Quite substantial sums of money were found about your person at the time of your arrest. During subsequent interviews in which you admitted to having committed both of the offences you told the police that $6,000 found in a shoulder bag you were carrying was the proceeds of the sale of some of the stamps.
I am sure that these were unpleasant experiences for both of the shopkeepers. Neither of them nor the security guard was injured although, undoubtedly, the pepper in the eyes would have been very uncomfortable.
There is authority from the Court of Appeal that the appropriate starting point where pepper is used in an attack to carry out a robbery is one of 4 years imprisonment after trial. That seems to me to be the appropriate starting point in this case before taking into account any other factors.
In determining the ultimate starting point I am of course entitled to take into account your background. You started your career of theft at the age of nine. You have had the benefit of a number of opportunities of rehabilitation when you were a young man. You went to O Pui Shan Boys’ Home, you went to Begonia Road Boys’ Home, you have several times been committed to Training Centre, all of this before or by the time you were 16.
From that time onwards, you have been sentenced to varying periods of imprisonment, somewhat optimistically been placed on probation, and fined. Since the age of nine -- you are now 39, so for the last 30 years -- you have amassed 62 convictions of which 31 were for theft, two for burglary and several for crimes of violence. It is no exaggeration to describe you as a professional criminal, albeit a somewhat unsuccessful one.
Counsel on your behalf has realistically recognised that I would be entitled to enhance the starting point of 4 years in the light of your background but it is not just your background, it is the fact that an enhancement will also have the effect of protecting members of the community from you.
I judge that the appropriate enhancement is one of 12 months and I take comfort with the fact that this appears to have been the approach adopted by the Court of Appeal in Chan Sai Chiu’s case, albeit that in that case the accused had far fewer previous convictions than you: but there is a limit to which a sentence may be enhanced.
So, after trial the appropriate sentence would be, on each of the two charges, 5 years imprisonment. The only mitigation that is available to you is your plea of guilty. That comes today at possibly what may accurately be described as the last possible moment. That said, under the current sentencing regime, you are still entitled to the one-third discount.
It is the duty of a court where an accused faces more than one charge to first impose the correct or appropriate sentence for each of the charges and then to consider the overall totality of the sentence to be served.
So, giving you the one-third discount from a starting point of 5 years reduces the sentence on each charge to be one of 3 years and 4 months imprisonment. The question then is what is the appropriate sentence to meet the justice of this case that you should serve in total?
In my judgment, it is 5 years and 6 months imprisonment. Consequently, 2 years and 2 months of the sentence on Count 2 are to be served consecutively to the sentence imposed on Count 1.