The Queen v. Liu Wai Choy

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG

(Appellate Jurisdiction)

MAGISTRACY CRIMINAL APPEAL No. 1199 OF 1986

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BETWEEN

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Coram: Hon. Barnes, J.

Date of Hearing: 23rd December, 1986

Date of Oral Judgment: 23rd December, 1986

Reasons in writing handed down: 5th January, 1987

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JUDGMENT

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1. The appellant pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempting to steal a dynamo generator from a private car.

2. Late one night, a party of police officers found a group of young men surrounding several cars. The appellant was in the Group which, at first sight, appeared to be repairing the vehicles. The police officers however, were suspicious of them and on further investigation found that a dynamo generator was in the course of being removed from one of the vehicles. All were charged with attempted theft of the dynamo from the vehicle which belonged to none of them but was in fact a vehicle hired from another. This appellant admitted after caution that he had committed the offence alleged. The confession was submitted in evidence and it is conceded on this appeal that it was properly admitted and that standing on its own it amounted to sufficient evidence to support the conviction.

3. The only ground of appeal relied on is the following:-

"In his Statement of Findings, the learned magistrate found as follows …. :

'In considering the evidence before me I accepted as truthful, believable, corroborative and accurate the evidence of the four police officers'."

4. The submission in support of this ground is that no corroboration of any evidence was required as a matter of law in this case, and that, even if the learned magistrate mistakenly thought that corroboration was so required, he could not find evidence supportive of the evidence implicating the Appellant. Mr. Alderdice submitted that, because the magistrate had indicated in his findings that he had looked for corroboration where corroboration was not required and found corroboration where corroboration did not exist, he may well have considered evidence relevant to the cases of the others but irrelevant in deciding whether the prosecution had proved its case against the Appellant.

5. It might have been better had the learned magistrate avoided using a term with the potential to found a faint ground of appeal. If “corroborative" is replaced by “consistent” the meaning of the sentence would not have been altered and counsel for the appellant would have had to look fruitlessly elsewhere for a ground of appeal. With all due respect to counsel's argument that is nearly all that can be said about his submission. I say “nearly all” because there is something else: even if the submission had merit there was the evidence contained in the Appellant's admission which, by itself, supported the conviction.

6. The Appeal is dismissed.

Mr. W.S.Yip for the Crown

Mr. G. Alderdice (Tang & Knight) for Appellant