HKSAR v. Kok Wai Shing

HCCC 473/2015

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CRIMINAL CASE NO 473 OF 2015

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Transcript of the Audio Recording
of the Sentence in the above Case

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COURT: You are acquitted of the murder charge that you face and convicted of manslaughter by reason of provocation, which means that the jury is satisfied that you strangled her to death. You were not acting in self-defence and you had the intention to kill or to cause her serious bodily harm. However, they found that you might have been provoked to do what you did.

According to the evidence, shortly before the incident, you had hurt your back and you were out of work. You were called useless by the deceased and you suspected that she had an affair with your neighbour in the room next door. That night, you two quarrelled and you claimed that she strangled you first and you were provoked into strangling her back, causing her to die. The force you used was so great that it caused the fractures at the laminar and both superior horns of the thyroid cartilage of the deceased. The pathologist told us that she could have died within seconds or minutes.

You had six previous convictions. On 6 October 2014, you were bound over not to commit any offence relating to violence. By commission of this present offence, you are in breach of this binding-over. I have referred myself to the case of Yau Kit Keung, CACC 350/2009. Similar to that case, although you had offered to plead guilty to manslaughter, that was rejected by the prosecution.

During the arraignment, you denied any form of homicide and throughout the trial, you have fought each and every element of murder, rather than fighting the case on the basis that you are not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.

In all the circumstances, I adjudge that a sentence of 12 years is called for in respect of the manslaughter charge.

In relation to the count of preventing the lawful burial of a corpse which you have already pleaded guilty to, you, having found that she had died, made no attempt to call for help or medical assistance. Instead, you put her body into a suitcase and wheeled the suitcase to a spot near the home of Madam Liu, one of the nannies to your son. You went to a nearby hardware shop to purchase a shovel, a bag of sand, three bags of cement, a red bucket and a trolley to carry these purchases. You then returned to that spot which was under a tree and started digging a hole and mixed the cement and sand with water. You then put the deceased’s body into the hole and covered her with the cement.

You showed no basic respect for a human body and you have deprived her of a decent and proper send-off in total disregard of the fact that she was a woman whom you have lived with for not a short period of time and the mother to your then 2-year-old son. What you did was disgraceful, uncivilised, cold-blooded and dehumanising. No doubt the burial was a cover up to avoid detection and to conceal the death and possibly made it more difficult for the pathologist to find out the cause of death.

That charge carries with it a maximum sentence of 7 years. I am of the view that a 3 year starting point is warranted and given your plea, you are sentenced to 2 years’ imprisonment on that charge.

Taking into account the totality principle, I order 1 year out of this 2 year sentence to run consecutively to the 12 year sentence for manslaughter, making it a total of 13 years’ imprisonment.

I make no separate order for the breach of binding over.