Yip Chun Ling and Others v. The Queen
Read the full judgment text of CACC 369/1969 on BabelCite. This Court of Appeal judgment was delivered on 8 August 1969.
1. The three appellants were jointly charged with conspiracy to obstruct the course of public justice contrary to the common law. They were convicted on 21st March 1969 and all three were sentenced to imprisonment and were also fined. They appealed against their conviction and the sentences.
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CACC000369/1969 IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG APPELLATE JURISDICTION CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 369 OF 1969 -----------------
----------------- Coram: Briggs, J. Date of Judgment: 8 August 1969 ----------------- JUDGMENT ----------------- 1. The three appellants were jointly charged with conspiracy to obstruct the course of public justice contrary to the common law. They were convicted on 21st March 1969 and all three were sentenced to imprisonment and were also fined. They appealed against their conviction and the sentences. 2. The first appellant is the proprietor of a firm which deals in gold articles and watches. The second and third appellants are fokis of that firm. The first appellant purchased some $250,000 worth of gold and attempted to smuggle it to Taipei. The police became aware of this and the first appellant was interviewed. He told certain lies to the police and in consequence he was tried and convicted of attempting to export the gold without a licence and of giving false information to the police. For the first offence he was sentenced to a fine of $8,000 and for the second offence he was fined $250. In addition the gold was confiscated. The second and third appellants were not implicated in those offences. 3. However the present offence is directly concerned with the former case. The first appellant told his fokis, the second and third appellants to tell certain lies to the police in a vain attempt to recover the gold. This plot was amateur and deceived no one. 4. In my view on the evidence before him,the magistrate had no alternative but to convict. Accordingly I dismissed their appeals against conviction. 5. The first appellant was sentenced to imprisonment for 12 months and in addition fined $2,000. the second and third appellants were each sentenced to imprisonment for 8 months and in addition were each fined $1,500. 6. In my view these sentences are wrong in principle and far too excessive. The first appellant had already been sentenced for giving false information to the police in connexion with the same matter. Indeed it is a matter for comment that this case against the first appellant was ever proceeded with at all. It would have been better perhaps merely to have charged the second and third appellants with giving false information to the police and left it at that. 7. In my view this is not a matter for imprisonment at all. As I have said above no one was deceived: the story which was concocted and told to the police was intrinsically unsound. The first appellant has already suffered very severe consequences from the transaction in respect of which these lies were told. As for the second and third appellants they merely did what they were told to do by their employer. 8. I am of the opinion also that the fincs were excessive. In the former case the first appellant was fined $250 for lying to the police. In the present case he suborned his fokis to go to the police with a false story. To that extent this is a more serious case than the former one. 9. I quashed the sentences of all three appellants and substituted the following therefor: the first appellant, a fine of $500: the second and third appellants, a fine of $250 each.
Representation: D.R. Boy, D.D.P.P. for Crown. Oswald Cheung, Q.C., Patrick Yu & Martin Lee for all appellants. |