CRIMINAL CASE NO. 287 OF 2012
COURT: I have to sentence you on a committal for sentence following your pleas of guilty to 12 charges of burglary.
You are a man who is now 42 years of age. Towards the end of 2010, you lost your job. That is, I am told and I accept, because your employers received the attentions of debt collectors from Macau who were chasing you for gambling debts. I appreciate the fact that your family was desperate for money.
Having lived a respectable life until your early 40s, you then turned to crime and between 26 January of 2011 and 31 December of that year, you committed the 12 burglaries. Five of them were domestic. The others were burglaries of offices or shops. You had been a decorator; you had tools and you knew how to break in. I accept that you caused no more damage than was necessary. The commercial burglaries took place at night and the domestic ones during the day.
In all but one case, the premises were unoccupied. I accept the mitigation put forward that it was your intention only to burgle unoccupied premises and it was a surprise that you found someone in the premises the subject to Charge 5, and I also accept that as soon as you realised she was there, you beat a hasty retreat.
`The property you took were things you could easily resell in Ap Liu Street, like telephones, computers, cameras, jewellery and cash. You ranged between Mongkok, North Point, Wanchai and Central.
That summary of your activity reveals the mitigation and also the aggravation. Turning to crime in your middle years is an unusual feature and I give you credit for your previous good character. But that has to be balanced against the obvious aggravation of such extensive burglary.
You earn a one-third discount for your frankness and plea of guilty.
Finally, I should say that the total amount by my calculation of the property stolen in all 12 burglaries came to $180,544.
I judge that, after trial, you would have been sent to prison for 6 years. The discount for your pleas of guilty results in a sentence of 4 years.
How the mathematics of achieving that total sentence is spread between the counts is not an important matter, but what I shall do is this. I shall say that the sentence on each charge is 2 years. One domestic burglary in fact normally attracts a 3-year starting point after trial, whilst 30 months is where courts start to look for one commercial burglary. In circumstances where the commercial burglaries are repeated - and one of them certainly, on Count 12, involves computers worth $56,000 - 2 years cannot be said to be, I hope, too much.
What I shall do to achieve the 4-year total is I shall say that the sentences of 2 years on Counts 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8, which are the domestic burglaries, they will all be concurrent to each other but they will be consecutive to the concurrent sentences on Charges 1, 2, 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12 which are the commercial burglaries. The total is thus 4 years’ imprisonment.
Finally, let me say I have read the letter that your wife wrote to me and that your son and daughter also put their names to. I have given as much weight as I can in the circumstances to the contents and the sentence of 4 years in total is one designed to be as short as it can in the circumstances.