HKSAR v. Chow Hung Man

DCCC 468/2013

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

CRIMINAL CASE NO 468 OF 2013

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Reasons for Sentence

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1.Defendant, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of burglary, to which you committed on 5 October 2012 at the 4th floor of No.15 Whampoa Street, Hung Hom.

2.On the day in question, you had burgled the premises between 2.50 pm and 4.20 pm when the occupant of those premises was out.  You had prised open the iron gate and broke the wooden door inside of the premises and prised off the doorknob.

3.However, it appears on doing so, you still were not able to open the wooden doors into the premises.

4.What did happen, however, was that in trying to break open the door, you cut yourself and fresh blood was left on a shoe-rack within the premises.

5.The bloodstain was found to belong to you and you were arrested on 3 March 2013.

6.You immediately admitted your guilt by writing to the police four days later.

7.The tenant of the premises said that nothing was stolen but that the repair of the iron gate and wooden door would could about $13,000. 

8.I have just dealt with you in another case DCCC1199/2012, of which Mr Alex Ng has made very full mitigation on your behalf.  I have also taken into account the mitigation advanced before me in this case.

9.I shall not go into detail as to what I have said earlier but, just for this case reference, I shall say that you are 36 years of age, single, with 14 previous convictions, of which two are similar and of which six relate to dishonesty.

10.The reason you committed this crime was because of your drug dependency and also the fact that you had incurred credit card debts and were in financial constraints as you had been unemployed for a few months.

11.You had requested for this case to be brought up together with DCCC1199 so that I could deal with you all at one go. 

12.In DCCC1199, that case also concerned a further two charges of burglary and one charge of attempted burglary.  The difference in this charge is that you acted alone and the premises was at a different place than that in DCCC1199.

13.You have pleaded guilty and shown your remorse.

14.As I have mentioned to Mr Ng that I will treat these sentences together as if I had tried you in one case and that would mean there would be four burglary offences to which you have pleaded guilty before me.

15.If they had been the four burglary offences, I would have taken a starting point of 4½ years’ imprisonment.  That would mean, after a plea of guilty, the sentence would be one of 3 years’ imprisonment, so that would be for both DCCC1199 and this case, DCCC468/2013.

16.I will, therefore, reflect that term in both these cases.

17.So in this case, as mentioned, the usual starting point after trial for domestic burglary is 3 years’ imprisonment.  Giving you your credit for your plea of guilty, that term shall be reduced to 2 years’ imprisonment.

18.In considering the principal of totality and the overall sentence of 3 years for these four burglaries, I order 6 months of this case DCCC468 to run consecutive to the case DCCC1199, which would make a total of 3 years’ imprisonment.

19.For the sake of clarity, all remaining sentences are to run concurrent to each other.