Read the full judgment text of CAAR 000001/1995 on BabelCite. This Court of Appeal judgment was delivered on 11 October 1995 before Yang CJ, Power VP, Mayo JA.
Criminal law – robbery – false imprisonment – taking conveyance without authority – sentencing – young offender – training centre order – manifestly inadequate – sentencing guidelines in The Queen v Mo Kwong Sang [1981] HKLR 610 and Attorney General v Li Chi Ko [1987] HKLR 1233 as considered in Attorney General v Yau Wing Hong [1995] 3 HKC 95 – Respondent, then aged 15, and accomplices accosted a 15-year-old boy, tied his hands with wire, took his keys and entered his parents' apartment, tied up the younger brother with a knife threat, tied up the parents, and escaped with about $10,000 cash. The same day, they tied up the occupant of a stone hut in Yuen Long under knife threat and stole property worth over $200,000, then escaped in a stolen light goods vehicle later abandoned – Whether the training centre sentence was wrong in principle and manifestly inadequate: yes; almost 17 was not 'extreme youth' and there were hardly any mitigating factors beyond a late guilty plea – Whether credit should be given for a guilty plea entered only after voir dire: yes, but only limited credit – Court allowed the Attorney General's review, quashed the training centre sentence, and imposed 6 years' imprisonment on each of counts 1, 3 and 5, 2 years on count 2, and 6 months on count 4, all to run concurrently – A co-respondent sentenced by another judge to 6 years' imprisonment was also taken into account.
Legal issues: Adequacy of training centre sentence for robbery offences · Credit for guilty plea entered after voir dire
Outcome: Application for review allowed; training centre sentence quashed and substituted with terms of imprisonment.