HKSAR v. Bui Van Hien
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HCCC310/2008 IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE CRIMINAL CASE NO. 310 OF 2008
Transcript of the Audio Recording
COURT: Defendant, please stand. The defendant has pleaded guilty before a magistrate to two counts of robbery, Count 1 and 2, and one count of assault with intend to rob, Count 3. He appears before me now for sentence. The facts of the case are simple. At 1.30 am, on 13 May 2008, on the ground floor of a public housing estate, the defendant grabbed the neck of a 16 year old girl from behind, threatened her with a knife and took from her one purse, one necklace and one mobile phone. Half an hour later, at a bus stop outside another public housing estate, he picked on a 44-year-old woman and snatched from her a mobile phone she was using, thus causing her pain. Then, at 11.30 the same morning, he turned on his third victim, again a woman in her mid-40s, and tried to snatch her necklace, only to be stopped by some police nearby. The defendant is aged 22. He is Vietnamese, and virtually nothing is known about him for certain. He does not live in Hong Kong and does not have any previous convictions in Hong Kong. In a written plea for leniency, the appellant claims that he sneaked into Hong Kong on the advice of some compatriot. Why? Because what he would earn by committing a crime and getting prison wages here would be a lot more than what he can get from work in Vietnam. There is some support in what he says because, according to the agreed facts, the defendant committed Count 3, his last act, in full view of the police. However, elsewhere in his letter the defendant did say that after two days of roughing it out in Hong Kong he was, I quote, “At a dead end and had no other way but to rob stuff to look for food or sell it to buy food.” In other words, he committed the first two offences for gain, and for that matter picked the time, place and no doubt easy targets for easy execution and escape. Either way, I do not think the claim to wanting to go to prison here amounts to any mitigation. Nor could defence counsel provide any authority to support that contention. Whatever the motive, those were still crimes committed on completely innocent victims. Besides, giving weight to that claim would give the defendant the unwarranted benefit of both the prison wages and a shorter than normal sentence. For Count 1, the proper starting point is 6 years’ imprisonment. For Count 2, it is 12 months. For Count 3, again 12 months. Because of the guilty pleas they will be reduced to 4 years 8 months and 8 months respectively. Taking into account the totality principle, a cap at 4 years and 8 months will be appropriate. In order that that may be achieved, I order the sentences in Count 2 and 3 to be concurrent but consecutive to that in Count 1.
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