Liu Kwok-leung v. The Queen

CACC001026/1978

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Coram: Briggs, C.J., Huggins and Pickering, JJ.A.

Date of Judgment: 8th December, 1978.

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JUDGMENT

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Pickering, J.A.:

1. The appellant, who is nineteen years old and has a clear record, pleaded guilty to one charge of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and to another of wounding with intent.

2. The appellant lives alone in a roof-top hut, the roof being crowded with similar huts. On an evening in July of this year the appellant and a woman of sixty, living in another hut on the roof-top, became involved in an argument the cause of which was allegedly that the woman had been gossiping about the appellant, calling him insane, and also saying that the appellant's brother had hit her. The argument became very heated and the appellant alleges that the woman dared him to chop her though she, on the other hand, says that she knows of no reason why the appellant should in fact have chopped her. However that may be, the appellant rushed into his hut, took up a chopper and returned to a room in the woman's hut where he chopped her over the head several times. Her injuries were serious including three lacerations of the scalp and multiple disfiguring lacerations over the right side of the face with compound fracture of the sinuses.

3. Another woman also living on the same roof-top came out from her hut together with a man to see what the commotion was about whereupon the appellant accused them of interfering and chased them with the chopper, eventually chopping the second woman, though less severely than the first, on the head and arm. He surrendered himself to the police some half an hour later.

4. Upon his plea of guilty he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment upon the first charge and to one consecutive year of imprisonment upon the second charge. We would not wish it to be thought that offences of this nature will, in the ordinary course of events, be treated any more leniently than those sentences imply. In this particular case, however, it is the unusually unfortunate upbringing of the appellant which causes us to think that some course other than a term of imprisonment may be more beneficial to him and to the community. The appellant was born in Macau and some eleven years ago his mother left his father and came alone to Hong Kong, leaving the appellant with his father in Macau. A year later the father died with the result that the appellant has had to stand on his own feet from the age of eight, providing for himself by obtaining employment as a dim sum boy in tea-houses and restaurants. At the age of fourteen he came to Hong Kong and was reunited with his mother. She, however, works as a domestic servant, living for the most part in her employer's premises. The appellant's only relatives were his mother and a brother and, whereas the mother was rarely at home, the brother left the family home sometime prior to the commission of these offences. Both were apathetic towards the appellant, who has been working in Hong Kong as a casual worker on construction sites and who, up to this day, has received only one year's schooling.

5. In the light of that miserable upbringing it seems to us that a measure of educational and vocational training against a background of discipline will profit this young man and the community more than a term of imprisonment and it is for that reason that we allow the appeal, set aside the two sentences of imprisonment and substitute a sentence of detention in a training centre.

Representation:

Appellant in person.

J.M. Duffy for Crown/respondent.