CRIMINAL CASE NO. 161 OF 2010
COURT: You have pleaded guilty, rather wisely if I may say, to a charge of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm, Count 2, and a second charge of being a member of a triad society, Count 3. Consequent upon those pleas, the charge of conspiracy to murder, Count 1, has been ordered to be left on the file marked “Not to be proceeded with without leave of this court of the Court of Appeal”.
The basis upon which your pleas are entered is that, having been recruited as a member of the Wo Shing Wo Triad Society in early 2009, you were required by your ‘big brother’ in the triad society, a man nicknamed ‘Tai Lung’ but whose formal name was, like yours, also Wong Kai-chun, to locate a businessman who worked for a Hong Kong company. You were instructed, as you put it yourself in your video-recorded interviews, to identify him and then “dog his footsteps”. Once you had located him, you were to inform Tai Lung and matters would then be handled by others.
As to what would happen to the man if you had managed to identify and locate him, it is clear that you understood something extremely unpleasant would happen because, for that relatively straightforward task, you knew, because you were told by Tai Lung, that there was a price of $2 million on the man’s head.
Although no figure was specifically mentioned as to what you would receive for the job you were to perform, you told an undercover police officer that you expected a share of $100,000; although later, in an interview, you put it at several tens of thousands of dollars but said you did not in fact know the exact amount. That is a significant amount for doing something relatively straightforward and uncomplicated.
Your state of mind as to the seriousness of the conspiracy’s objective is also underscored by the fact that, after making attempts on two occasions to locate the target, you withdrew from the conspiracy, sensing the serious consequences of your actions for him and, ultimately, for yourself. Consequently, you refused to get further involved.
However, whilst it is accepted by the prosecution that you did withdraw from the conspiracy at an early stage, you nevertheless played your part in trying to locate the target concerned on two separate days by positioning yourself for several hours, armed initially with a photograph of your quarry, on a footbridge where he was expected to appear and by accompanying a fellow triad member to the target’s office building on the second day, where you remained at street level whilst he went up to the office in question.
Had you located the target, no doubt you would have done what you were instructed to do and informed your ‘big brother’, thus setting in motion some extremely serious consequences for that businessman. Those consequences, I make clear, were the intentional causing of grievous bodily harm to him, though neither the form nor the extent of that harm to be caused was something that you could have been in any position to control.
This case has troubled me and I have adjourned overnight to consider the appropriate sentence in your case. Although it has been submitted with some force that you do not fit the mould of an active triad member and that you quickly realised you were in this particular activity over your head, this was a very serious plot in which you agreed to play a valuable part.
The message must go out firmly that the arranging of third parties, such as triad members or other criminal gangs or elements, to harm other people, such as rival businessmen, for reward, has no place in any civilised society. It may be that in corrupt, lawless or less advanced countries in other parts of the world, contracts are put out to harm specific individuals, or worse, but in a modern, civilised community, priding itself on the rule of law, it will not be tolerated and anyone who participates in any way in such an enterprise must expect to be dealt with harshly by the courts. Accordingly, there must be a strong element of deterrence in sentencing anybody involved in an offence such as Count 2.
In this case, you, as a member of the Wo Shing Wo Triad Society, were recruited to target someone you had never met, known or had anything to do with, for reward, in the knowledge that grievous bodily harm would be caused to him. You were prepared to do as you were instructed until you realised the seriousness of your position. And your position was serious for, although you were never tasked to injure the target yourself, you were to play an essential role in identifying and locating him so that others might do what you would then have been in no position to control.
This sort of thing is not a game from which you can walk away, saying you did not strike, or it was never your purpose to strike, the eventual blows. Your job was to make it possible, or easy, for others to do what they wanted to do. What you did was to agree to facilitate the commission of an extremely serious offence on someone who had nothing to do with you and had done you no harm, and whom you did not even know, and to be rewarded for doing so.
A number of cases have been brought to my attention, but none of them can provide me with any guidelines beyond telling me what other judges in other cases thought appropriate to the circumstances of those particular facts. They are, of course, relevant to the sentencing principles applicable. One of the principles applicable is that it is an aggravating feature if a conspiracy involves triad members and entails the use of a triad society to carry out its purpose.
I bear in mind that, fortunately, nothing actually happened to the target concerned, although that was a combination of luck on your part in not locating him, and the correct decision of the police in making the operation overt.
Nevertheless, the gravamen of Count 2 is in the agreement and it is clear that you agreed to associate yourself with this enterprise and carried out an important function on two separate days. In my judgment, the starting point for a triad conspiracy of the type I have described and as particularised in Count 2 is 10 years’ imprisonment.
Bearing in mind your limited, albeit necessary, role and your timely decision to withdraw from the conspiracy, which the prosecution accept - though you could do and did not do anything to put a stop to it - I shall adopt a starting point of 9 years’ imprisonment in your case.
Although your plea was not entered at the first available opportunity, I understand the difficulties that can sometimes be faced by defendants when confronted with very serious charges, and no doubt you have been wisely advised and wisely accepted the idea of pleading guilty to Count 2. I shall give you a one-third discount for your plea which brings the sentence down to 6 years’ imprisonment.
I shall trim that sentence further to 5 years and 9 months’ imprisonment in view of your clear record, which I have to say does not count for much since the more serious offence comprised in Count 2 was carried out by someone who was a self-confessed triad member and, therefore, hardly a person of good character, and whose membership preceded the commission of the offence in Count 2.
In giving that further 3-month reduction, I also bear in mind the fact that you have already been dealt with for a further offence of trafficking in dangerous drugs for which you were sent to prison after trial for 3 months and which offence could have been dealt with by me since you were arrested at the same time in respect of that offence and the original offences which have resulted in those before me today.
I bear that sentence in mind in reviewing the overall totality which will result if I make your sentences for the present offences wholly consecutive to the sentence already passed for that drug trafficking offence.
For these reasons, the sentence on Count 2 will be one of 5 years 9 months’ imprisonment, which will run consecutively to the sentence of 3 months’ imprisonment passed in the District Court on 15 November this year.
As for Count 3, the appropriate starting point is, in my view, 12 months’ imprisonment which I reduce, for your plea of guilty, to 8 months’ imprisonment.
I have taken into account, as I have explained, in aggravation of the offence on Count 2, that that offence was committed in a triad context. To avoid double-counting by passing a consecutive sentence for the very matter, namely, Count 3, which I have taken into account in aggravation of the sentence for the more serious offence, Count 2, I shall impose a concurrent sentence in respect of Count 3.
Accordingly, the sentences that I pass will be as follows:
on Count 2 - 5 years 9 months’ imprisonment;
on Count 3 - 8 months’ imprisonment concurrent with the
sentence on Count 2.
I order the sentence of 5 years and 9 months in respect of the offences before me to run consecutively to the 3‑month sentence already passed in the District Court less than a month ago, on 15 November 2010, for trafficking in dangerous drugs. Those are the sentences of the court.