CRIMINAL CASE NO. 39 OF 2012
COURT: I have to sentence you for the offence of manslaughter to which you pleaded guilty on the basis of your diminished responsibility.
I am not going to repeat the facts that supported the prosecution’s case. They have been read out in court. Suffice it to say that tensions in difficult domestic circumstances led you to attacking your 83-year-old mother. Given her frailty, the injuries she then suffered caused her death.
It is the sad fact that you have long suffered from schizophrenia. The nature of that mental illness has caused a deterioration in your personality such that your emotions, your morals, your judgment and your self-control were, and are, seriously impaired.
The visiting psychiatrists to Siu Lam, where you have been detained, agree that you were, at the material time, suffering from an abnormality of mind arising from mental illness that substantially diminished your responsibility for the actions that led to your mother’s death.
Those two psychiatrists recommend that I make a Hospital Order authorising your admission and detention at the Correctional Services Department Psychiatric Centre. They do not ask me to specify a period of that detention and the effect of the order is one to detain you whilst you receive treatment for your illness.
I well appreciate those matters of mitigation that your counsel has put before me. I accept the picture he painted of your life. I appreciate that I am dealing with someone deserving of understanding and mercy. I accept his sensible submissions concerning what took place that led to the injuries and to the death, summed up in the phrase, “something snapped”.
I accept that you are remorseful. I accept the submission made that on the evidence available to us, there is no risk of repetition. I make it clear, if it helps anyone dealing with your case in the future, that as far as this court is concerned, it does not see you as a danger to the public. Mr Acton-Bond rightly points to the fact that some schizophrenics exhibit a history of violence. There is none in your case.
It is in that spirit that I will make the Hospital Order. It is not made as punishment. It is directed to the treatment of your condition. It is for an unspecified period as the psychiatrists cannot say how long the treatment will take. I have to have regard to your interests and to the interests of society. They coincide here because it is obvious to me that the Hospital Order can be of benefit to both.
Do not think that because there is no period specified for the duration of the order that you will be forgotten. The procedures in place will ensure that your case will be reviewed periodically to ensure that your detention remains justified.
Without wanting to go into the history, all I wish to say is it is a matter of regret that, in your case, over a year went by when you lived under the shadow of the possibility of a conviction for murder with its mandatory life sentence of imprisonment when it was obvious right from the outset that today’s disposal was always going to be highly probable.
Accordingly, let me say that I am satisfied as to those matters set out in section 45 of the Mental Health Ordinance at section 1, paragraphs (b) and (c), and I am satisfied that arrangements have been made to receive you at the Correctional Services Department Psychiatric Centre.
Accordingly, I will make the Hospital Order authorising your admission there and your detention there.