Hon Macrae Acting CJHC, Zervos and M Poon JJA in Court
Dates of Hearing:
13 and 14 January 2025
Date of Judgment:
31 July 2025
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J U D G M E N T
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Content
Paragraph
Introduction
1 - 6
The prosecution case
7 - 24
The defence case
25 - 39
The grounds of appeal
40
Ground 1: the post-offence conduct
41
The Judge’s directions
42 - 44
The submissions on post-offence conduct
45 - 53
Discussion on post-offence conduct
54 - 62
Ground 2: the missing call
63 - 64
Ground 3: flagrant incompetence of legal representatives
65
The issue of the missing call
66 - 67
The evidence of the missing call
68 - 82
The fresh evidence
83 - 94
The legal principles of flagrant incompetence
95 - 107
The allegations of flagrant incompetence
108 - 126
The submissions on flagrant incompetence
125 - 126
Discussion on flagrant incompetence
127 - 131
The findings regarding the missing call
132
The effect of the missing call
133 - 155
Whether a material irregularity
156 - 160
161 - 167
Conclusion
168
Hon Zervos JA (giving the Judgment of the Court):
Introduction
1.
The appellant was indicted for the murder of his father and the theft of $203,000 from his father’s bank account. He pleaded guilty to theft and not guilty to murder. On 29 July 2021, following a trial before Joseph Yau J (the Judge) and a jury he was convicted of murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and 2 years and 3 months’ imprisonment for theft to run concurrently with the sentence for the murder.
2.
In pleading guilty to the theft count, the appellant agreed to the Summary of Facts in which he admitted that after killing his father, he took his father’s ATM card from his wallet. He knew that his father had written down the ATM card’s PIN on a small piece of paper, which his father kept inside his wallet. He found the piece of paper and used the ATM card and the password to transfer and withdraw funds out of his father’s account to pay a loanshark.
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