Ho Chun Ping v. The Queen

CACC000503/1971

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG

(APPELLATE JURISDICTION)

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 503 OF 1971

-----------------

-----------------

Coram: Pickering, J.

Date of Judgment: 3rd September, 1971.

-----------------

JUDGMENT

-----------------

1. The appellant pleaded guilty to possession of dangerous drugs. He is 25 years of age and has three previous convictions, two of them in respect of dangerous drugs. He was sent to the Drug Addiction Treatment Centre last year and has also served two short prison terms.

2. On the date of his trial the appellant had already been made arrangements to go as a voluntary patient to SARDA's Shek Kwu Chau Rehabilitation Centre and, but for his arrest on the present charge, would have reported to Shek Kwu Chau on the day before his trial.

3. The learned magistrate was interested to assist the appellant and obtained various reports. It appeared that the appellant was not suitable for treatment at Tai Lam due to poor motivation after his previous treatment there. The probation officer, however, was prepared to accept the appellant as a probationer on the understanding that he went to Shek Kwu Chau. This solution, however, was blocked by a medical certificate from the Medical Officer at the Victoria Remand Centre to the effect that the appellant was medically unsuitable for Shek Kwu Chau Treatment Centre because he was suffering from a venereal disease. Accordingly, the learned magistrate imposed a sentence of 9 months imprisonment and it is against that sentence that this appeal lies.

4. I thought it desirable to discover at first hand what SARDA had to say about accepting as a patient at Shek Kwu Chau a man suffering from venereal disease and I caused such enquiry to be made. It may be of interest to magistrates to know that the fact of venereal disease is not a bar to treatment at Shek Kwu Chau and, in the present instance, the SARDA authorities intimated that they were prepared to accept the appellant and to treat him for drug addiction and venereal disease simultaneously.

5. Accordingly I set aside the sentence of 9 months imprisonment and placed the appellant on probation for 12 months, it being a condition of his probation that he should attend at Shek Kwu Chau from the 21st of this month.

6. The Medical Officer at Victoria Remand Centre has now been made aware that venereal disease is not necessarily a bar to admission to Shek Keu Chau.

7. This may be an opportune place to mention that it has come to the notice of this court that the authorities at SARDA are sometimes inconvenienced by the fact that magistrates and judges not infrequently place offenders upon probation with a condition that they attend Shek Kwu Chau without any previous reference to SARDA. Shek Kwu Chau is not, of course, a branch of the Prisons Department and SARDA is a voluntary agency. The condition of probation to which I have referred should not therefore be imposed without it having first been ascertained that SARDA is willing to accept the particular offender at Shek Kwu Chau. This is, of course, a general observation and does not relate to the facts of this particular case.

Representation:

Appellant in person

Niamatullah C.C. for Crown.