HKSAR v. LI WAI KIT

DCCC889/2012

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

CRIMINAL CASE NO. 889 OF 2012

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Reasons for Sentence

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1.  Li Wai-kit and Lee Siu-wai, you have been convicted on your own pleas of the offence of robbery.

2.  Although the robbery did not involve the use or display of a weapon, the circumstances were particularly serious.  You both followed a 20-year-old girl who was walking alone in the Tai Po Waterfront Park at half past midnight.  You, Lee Siu-wai, suddenly grabbed her neck and pushed her to the ground.  You then struck her five times in the face.  You, Li Wai-kit, then tried to snatch her handbag and eventually managed to take it from her.  One of you ordered her to surrender the Smartphone she had in her trouser pocket, and after she did so, you both then fled.  You then abandoned the victim’s handbag and those contents which were of limited value to you in the grassland or in a public toilet at the park, but you, Li Wai-kit, kept her mobile phone, and you, Lee Siu-wai, kept her money.

3.  A number of the stolen items were later recovered by the police but not the victim’s wallet, her identity card, her home visit permit, her bankcard, her Octopus card or the money.  

4.  The victim was taken to hospital and found to have suffered bruising on her face and left hand, a laceration on her lower lip and tenderness at both her knees.  This would have been a terrifying experience for any victim but particularly so when it involved a young woman walking alone at night.

5.  I have listened to all that your solicitor, Miss Ho, has said on your behalf and I have looked at the cases to which she has referred me.  I am aware that a previous Chief Justice in the case of R v Yau Kwok Tung [1987] HKLR 782 said that a sentence of 4 years imprisonment was in the circumstances of the case he was dealing with at the top end of the tariff for robberies where weapons were not displayed. 

6.  It should be noted that he was not saying that 4 years was in every case at the top end of the tariff where weapons were not displayed.  Even if one ignores the multiple previous convictions each one of you has for offences of dishonesty, the aggravating circumstances in this case, namely, that the robbery involved following and then attacking a young woman walking in a park late at night and then inflicting gratuitous violence on her in the course of the robbery justify a higher starting point in this case, namely, 4 and a half years’ imprisonment.

7.  I do not see any reason to distinguish between you in terms of starting point.  Even if you, Li Wai-kit, may not have been the one who first attacked the victim or pushed her to the ground or hit her in the face, you took advantage of what your accomplice had done and wrenched her bag from her.  

8.  You have both pleaded guilty before this court and therefore are entitled to the usual discount of one-third by reason of your pleas.

9.  Miss Ho has carefully set out all that she could properly have said on your behalf.  Nothing she has said, however, convinces me that you are entitled to any discount beyond that of the one-third to which I have already referred.  The fact that you may have committed this offence because of the effects of taking cough syrup and sleeping pills is no mitigation.

10.  I sentence each of you to 3 years’ imprisonment.