HKSAR v. Chan Bo Hung

DCCC 845/2016

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

CRIMINAL CASE NO 845 OF 2016

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REASONS FOR SENTENCE

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Introduction

1.The defendant, an elderly man of 73 years of age, pleaded guilty before another judge to 2 counts of wounding (Charge 1 - Wounding 17 - the victim is the defendant’s sister, Madam Chan and Charge 2 - Wounding 19 - the victim is Madam Chan’s husband).

2.Today the case comes before me for sentence with a psychologist’s report on the defendant; the defendant confirmed his prior pleas and admission of facts.

Facts

3.This is a revenge attack.  The event leading up to the attack happened about 10 years ago, which involved the sale of a family property in the Mainland by Madam Chan without the knowledge of the defendant.  The defendant’s borne a secret grudge against Madam Chan ever since that day.

4.On the day of offence (1 August 2016) at around 6 o’clock in the evening, the defendant, armed with a cleaver, was lying in wait for Madam Chan at the entrance to the Marriot hotel in Admiralty Central.  As soon as Madam Chan and her husband, who had been invited to a relative’s wedding banquet held at the hotel, appeared at the entrance, the defendant came up behind her and without a word hit her in the head with the cleaver.  Her face immediately covered in blood.

5.The attack did not end there, defendant was trying to hit her again but it was warded off by her husband, Mr Chan, with his hand, and as a result of which Mr Chan had his hand cut by the cleaver.

6.A report was made to the police, officers soon arrived at the scene and had the defendant taken into custody.  The defendant told the police that he chopped his sister because she sold the property without asking him first.  In his backpack, the officers recovered the weapon - the cleaver.

7.Both victims were sent to hospital for treatment.  Madam Chan sustained cut wound and fracture of her skull while her husband received a cut wound to his left thumb.

Mitigation

8.The defendant, who has no prior criminal history, is a married man with 3 grown up children by two marriages.  The court was told that the defendant did not receive much education - only 2 years primary in the Mainland.  Before his retirement, he had spent better part of his working life in the factory and before that he was a sailor for 13 years.

9.Many including his children, spouse and relatives have written letters to the court pleading leniency on the defendant’s behalf, but not a single letter from the defendant himself.  They all speak highly of the defendant such as a loving father, a hard-working man, a person willing to help others etc.

10.From those letters, I could detect their sentiments - “To their astonishment, the defendant committed such violent crimes; it beggars belief how the defendant could have become so violent a person they have known to be kind.”  In one of his daughters’ letters, it’s described on a visit to her father in custody that the defendant cried in disbelief that he could have hurt his own sister so badly.  To his daughter, the defendant has shown remorse for what he’d done.

11.Counsel submitted that this was a one-off incident; his behaviour was completely out of his character, and the likelihood of reoffending remained low.

Reasons

12.As is stated in the case of Wong Luk Sau CACC 2/2012, a case was referred to by defence in mitigation, the Appellate Court says that:-

“16. There are no sentencing guidelines for the offence of wounding with intent. In Hung Kar Chun the Court of Appeal established a range of 3 to 12 years’ imprisonment for this offence;

17. It is true that the range of 3 to 12 years is not a sentencing tariff, and the court is not obliged to impose 3 years’ imprisonment as the minimum.

18. For the offence of wounding with intent, the circumstances of the offence and the background of offenders differ from case to case, and other decided cases are, in our view, of limited reference value.”

13.The facts of Wong’s case are that both the defendant and the victim were 78 years old men who lived in the same housing estate.  It was a quarrel over a chess game a few days before, which led to the subsequent attack.

14.On the day of attack, the defendant went up to the victim who was watching others playing chess in the park of the estate and demanded compensation for what had happened before.  In the ensuing altercation, the defendant took out a knife, and upon seeing that, the victim took to his heels, only he was caught up by the defendant after running for 60 to 70 metres.

15.The defendant stabbed him injuring the area under the left armpit.  The defendant continued to attack him with the knife, as he tried to fend off the attack with his hand, his left thumb and index finger were also injured.  The defendant then ran away and police were called.

16.The Appellate Court, having taken into account, in particular, the following matters- his old age (78), his having received a heart operation, and one conviction record for illegal gambling- reduced the sentence of 3 years after trial to one of 2 years and 3 months.

17.In paragraph 24 of the judgment (Wong’s case), it’s pointed that “………….the courts would not tolerate attacking another person with a lethal weapon such as a knife on minor provocation or while having a dispute, and for this type of cases the courts would impose severe and deterrent sentences.”

18.Speaking of seriousness, the facts of the instant case are, in my view, more serious than that of Wong’s case in that the defendant, armed with a heavy knife- the cleaver, was aiming at one of the most vulnerable parts of a person, i.e. the head.

19.The injuries suffered by Madam Chan could have been a lot worse; it was her sheer luck that this wasn’t the case, all thanked to her husband’s timely intervention to stop the defendant from further attack. It certainly had nothing to do with the defendant who definitely had the intent to do her GBH.

20.It’s clear from the facts of the case and mitigation put forward that this was not a spur-of-the-moment attack, but rather a cold, calculating criminal act on the part of the defendant, who had harboured a secret grudge against his sister over the sale of the family property for a long period of time - nearly a decade.

21.The psychologist’s (Miss Chung) report, on the whole, is not a favourable one, which contains more negative rather than positive features in it, for example, “He had superficial remorse and virtually no empathy for the victims.  He lacked insight into his problem …… his risk of recidivism of violent offence against the same victim was assessed to be moderate …….” (See paragraph 11 of the report) 

22.In the concluding paragraph of the report, Miss Chung described the defendant in the following ways - “Personality-wise, he was chauvinistic, rigid, revengeful and self-centred.  The defendant had poor anger management.  He was easily irritated …… he held distorted belief that he could then achieve justice by the assault.  He omitted the possible harm his violent acts might bring to the victims.  He minimised the seriousness of his violent acts .…..”

23.In the early part of the report, the defendant was quoted as saying that he had harboured an intention to inflict injury on his youngest sister (Madam Chan), specifically on her head, to bring shame on her as revenge since 2007 (the year in which the family property was sold).  He came up with a plan to injure her in August 2016 …… the defendant believed that if people knew that his youngest sister was attacked by him, they would know that she was wrong in selling his property without his consent ……

24.What is worrying is that, on the materials before the court, I don’t seem to find anything showing that the defendant accepted his wrongdoing in this case, his genuine remorse and more importantly his promise not to do it again or any inference to that effect.

25.Counsel has been trying very hard to persuade the court to accept that the defendant is remorseful and such thing would not happen again in the future for they would not see each other.

26.Given the strong evidence against him in the present case, I wouldn’t be surprised if he chose to plead guilty.  From what I gather so far is the impression that the defendant still thinks he was in the right over this matter, I don’t detect any remorse, let alone genuine one, on his part.  With that kind of attitude, there is truth to what the psychologist has assessed the risk of his reoffending against the same victim, Madam Chan, to be moderate.

27.The court was told that Madam Chan had fully recovered from her physical injuries, but as far as psychological ones are concerned, she had not been asked about it, so it’s not clear whether she would suffer the effects of the attack for any length of time.

28.The ultimate sentence, in my view, should carry sufficient deterrence so as to send the defendant a clear message that if he would ever do it again, the price to pay would be high.

Conclusion

29.For what I have said above, in respect of the offence of wounding 17, I take 2 years 9 months as starting point and for Wounding 19, 18 months.  He is entitled to a 1/3 discount for his pleas.  After deduction, he is sentenced to 22 months for Wounding 17 and 12 months for Wounding 19 respectively. 

30.Two victims are involved-each sustained a different degree of injury- these are two separate and distinct offences.  Taking into account the principle of totality, I order that the term of Wounding 17 should run consecutively to 2 months of the term of Wounding 19, the total term is one of 24 months’ imprisonment.