Chan Fat v. The Queen

CACC000349/1971

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG

(APPELLATE JURISDICTION)

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 349 OF 1971

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Coram: Huggins, J.

Date of Judgment: 15th July, 1971.

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JUDGMENT

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1. This is an appeal against a sentence of detention in a Training Centre imposed in respect of one charge of unlawful assembly and one charge of possession of an offensive weapon in a public place.

2. The conduct of this Appellant on the evening in question can only be regarded as outrageous. He was employed as an usher in a cinema. A lady went to the cinema one evening and bought a ticket. The Appellant behaved in an extremely rude manner towards this lady as she was buying her ticket, but she then left and returned an hour later for the show. She had been so upset by the incident that she took a friend with her to the cinema to see that she was not interfered with. During the show the Appellant and a number of other persons, apparently friends of his, came and sat immediately behind this lady and continued to annoy her. After the show she left the theatre and found her husband waiting for her outside. The Appellant and one of the other men was apparently then outside the cinema or at least within view, for she pointed him out to her husband. As if his conduct up to that point had not been bad enough the Appellant then went into the theatre and came out with a number of persons (about seven or eight of them) all armed with offensive weapons. They surrounded the lady and her husband but they managed to escape into a nearby shop. The police were sent for and this Appellant and his companions were even then found by the police gathered in a hostile and belligerent manner - with weapons in their hands, though hidden by their sleeves. When the police arrived this Appellant dropped a chopper.

3. The Appellant was not a first offender: in 1970 he was convicted of demanding money with menaces. That was in July and he was placed on probation for twelve months. That period of probation had not expired when these offences were committed. Indeed the Probation Officer reported that he had been contemplating applying to the court because the Appellant had been behaving so badly that he was in breach of his probation order: it was only his arrest by the police for these further offences that prevented his arrest for breach of the probation order. The report clearly shows that the Appellant has not taken advantage of the leniency shown to him last year: he did not report as he was required to do and in my view the learned Magistrate certainly had no alternative but to impose a sentence of some kind of detention. The Appellant was born in 1956 and in those circumstances I think that the sentence which he imposed in fact was entirely proper. It is certainly by no means too severs.

15th July, 1971.

Representation: