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Press Summary (Chinese)

FACC NO. 8 OF 2023

[2023] HKCFA 37

IN THE COURT OF FINAL APPEAL OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

FINAL APPEAL NO. 8 OF 2023 (CRIMINAL)

(ON APPEAL FROM CACC NO. 309 OF 2018)

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JUDGMENT

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Chief Justice Cheung:

1. I agree with the joint judgment of Mr Justice Fok PJ and Mr Justice Lam PJ.

Mr Justice Ribeiro PJ:

2. I agree with the joint judgment of Mr Justice Fok PJ and Mr Justice Lam PJ.

Mr Justice Fok PJ and Mr Justice Lam PJ:

3. On 19 September 2018, the appellant was convicted after trial, before Barnes J and a jury, [1] of two counts of murder. The victims were the appellant’s wife, Madam Wong Siew Fing (“Madam Wong”), and daughter, Khaw Li Ling (“Lily”), and they had been poisoned by carbon monoxide issuing from a yoga ball placed in the car in which they were travelling. The jury’s verdicts on the two counts were unanimous and the appellant was sentenced by the Judge to life imprisonment on each count.

4. The appellant’s application for leave to appeal was unanimously dismissed by the Court of Appeal on 7 June 2022. [2] On 25 October 2022, the Court of Appeal refused to certify two points of law for which the appellant sought a certificate in order to pursue an appeal to this Court. [3]

5. On 6 June 2023, the Appeal Committee granted leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal limited to the basis that it was reasonably arguable that the Judge’s directions to the jury concerning inferences that might be drawn from the allegedly missing stopper of the yoga ball amounted to a misdirection and gave rise to substantial and grave injustice. [4]

The prosecution case

6. The prosecution case was based on circumstantial evidence which was to the following effect. In the afternoon of 22 May 2015, Madam Wong, aged 47, and Lily, aged 16, were found unconscious in Madam Wong’s yellow Mini Cooper car which was stationary at a bus stop near Sai O Village in the New Territories and about 1.6 km from the house in Tai Tung Village in which they lived. Madam Wong and Lily were removed from the car by paramedics and taken to Prince of Wales Hospital, where they were both certified dead. The cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning and the time of their deaths was estimated at between 12.45 pm and 2.45 pm on 22 May 2015. Initial investigations focused on the car as the source of the carbon monoxide gas. The car, however, was not the source of the gas. Instead, the carbon monoxide had escaped from a yoga ball that was found partially deflated in the boot of the car when Madam Wong and Lily were discovered. The yoga ball in question, together with another yoga ball, had been filled with carbon monoxide by the appellant, in the circumstances described further below. The critical questions at the trial were who put the yoga ball in