HKSAR v. LIN JUN

CACC 135/2012

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 135 OF 2012

(ON APPEAL FROM HCCC NO. 319 OF 2011)

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JUDGMENT

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1. On 22 March 2011, the Applicant was seen loitering at the shoulder of the Kwai Tsing bridge by a team of police officers. When she was approached, she tried to climb over the parapet, shouting that she wanted to die. After she was brought to safety, she told the police officers that she had strangled her baby girl. The Applicant had given birth to a baby girl on 27 September 2010.

3. The police had also found 2 suicide notes, where the Applicant had written that she wanted to take the baby to another world.

4. The Applicant was subsequently convicted of infanticide under Section 47C of the Offences Against the Person Ordinance, Cap 212 and was ordered to be detained at the Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre for an unspecified period.

5. According to the medical evidence, the Applicant was suffering from severe depressive episodes with psychotic symptoms and the onset of her mood problems started during her postpartum period.  The medical opinion was unanimous in recommending a hospital order for an unspecified period for the applicant. 

6. The Applicant now seeks leave to appeal and asks that the hospital order should be limited in time.  Miss Crebbin Diana Mervyne has been instructed by the Director of Legal Aid to give the court such assistance as the court may require.  We are grateful to Miss Crebbin for her attendance today.  The Applicant has also handed to us a letter that she wrote explaining that she believed that with the excellent treatment she has been receiving and would continue to receive, she should be fully recovered at the end of one year.  She also told us through Miss Crebbin that she was worry that because her detention would be for an unspecified period she would be forgotten.  That is why she wanted her detention to be for a specified period.  She has told us that she is deeply sorry for what she had done.  She would not do it again and she wishes to return to her family in the mainland and to repay society by hard work.  We do not doubt her good intention.  In fact we have every sympathy for her.

7. But the Applicant should know that her detention at Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre is not to punish her.  It was explained in 1979 by the then Chief Justice in R v Tsui Chung-Leung CACC 414 of 1979 that

“…. unless the medical opinion of psychiatric specialists who have examined the patient is to the effect that the patient can confidently be expected to be fit for release within a specified period … it is wiser, both in the interests of the patient and for the protection of the public, that the order should have no term attached to it.”

8. Her detention will be kept under constant review.  It would be reviewed annually by a panel of psychiatrists, who will consider when the Applicant may safely be released.  It is the job of the panel to ensure that no patient is detained for longer than is absolutely necessary.

9. Although we must dismiss her application, the Applicant should know that she will be released as soon as she is fit for release.  She would not be forgotten.