CRIMINAL CASE NO. 100 OF 2012
COURT: The defendant has pleaded guilty to two counts of robbery in the Magistrates Court. He appears before me now for sentence.
Count 1 on the indictment took place in the dead of night. The victims were a European family living in a detached house on the Peak. They were Mr B, Mrs B and Mrs B’s mother, Mrs T. Mrs T, whose bedroom was on a lower floor, was the first to be subdued and tied up. She was cut on the thigh and suffered a 1.5 cm deep laceration.
The commotion that that created woke Mr and Mrs B who, on coming down for a look, were punched and kicked by three knife-holding intruders who we now know are the defendant and his two accomplices. When they too were subdued, the intruders demanded and were given valuables. Still not satisfied, they held Mr B and Mrs T hostages and made Mrs B go out to get more cash from an ATM machine. She was threatened that her family would be killed if she went to the police. The incident ended with Mrs B driving the intruders to Western where they made off in a taxi.
In all, the gang had stolen a total of $2.28 million worth of cash and other properties from the victims. Mr B, who was slashed on the forearm, had to undergo surgery to repair some cut muscle and tendon. Mrs B, who was bleeding on the wrist, declined medical treatment.
Count 2 took place nine months after the first incident. It was 8.30 in the evening. Mr B, in the same house, was on the phone by the swimming pool, when the defendant rushed out and punched him on the face. When Mr B shouted out, the defendant threatened and attempted to attack him with a screwdriver. Mr B used his hands to defend himself and, as a result, sustained injuries on his lips and palms. In any event, the defendant managed to tie Mr B’s hands with some plastic bands and took from him an ATM card plus the PIN number. He did not take anything else from the house.
He escaped through the back yard when a security guard rang the doorbell. The police were called. About an hour later, the police spotted the defendant on Old Peak Road and arrested him after some resistance. On him was Mr B’s ATM card.
Under caution, he admitted to the robbery in Count 2, but it was his DNA on the plastic bands used to tie Mr B’s hands that eventually linked him to Count 1. The same DNA was found on one of the knives used in that robbery that the police recovered. He denied it at first but pleaded guilty to both Count 1 and Count 2 before the magistrate.
The defendant is aged 36 and is a mainlander. He left school after finishing primary 6 in Sichuan, China. He has five previous convictions, one of which is similar. For that past similar offence, a robbery perpetrated in 2002, he was sentenced by the Court of First Instance to a term of 5 years and 4 months on a plea of guilty. That would mean a starting point of 8 years, no doubt for a matter of some gravity. The rest of his previous convictions are made up of unlawful landing and remaining.
In mitigation, counsel has very little to say for the defendant. No attempt was made to apportion blame between the perpetrators in Count 1. Nor was there any attempt to explain how the three victims sustained their injuries. I take that as a concession that whatever happened that night happened within the ambit of a joint enterprise for which the three of them were equally to be blamed.
Likewise for Count 2, there is no submission that the defendant was oblivious as to location. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine that he did not know that he was breaking into the same house, obviously by some means or route that remained undetected and/or unremedied even after the previous incident.
Given the many aggravating factors in the case, Count 1 and Count 2 should, in my judgment, be met with the higher starting points of 10 years and 8 years respectively. After the customary one-third discount, they will be lowered to 6 years 10 months and 5 years 4 months respectively.
Taking into account the totality principle but heeding the need to reflect their separate and individual criminality at the same time, I order 3 years and 2 months of the sentence in Count 2 to run consecutively to the sentence in Count 1, thus giving a total of 10 years.
I sentence the defendant to a total of 10 years’ imprisonment.
The starting points of 10 years and 8 years, after a one-third discount, should be 6 years 8 months and 5 years 4 months. Therefore, to achieve 10 years’ imprisonment, I will have to order 3 years and 4 months of the sentence in Count 2 to run consecutively to the sentence in Count 1.