Page 6, The STAR, Hongkong, Thursday, September 24, 1970.
Sir Ivo gives reasons
SIR Ivo.
for allowing those two
appeals
HE CHIEF Justice, Sir Ivo Rigby, today issued a special state-
THE CHIEF Justice, Sine Court explaining why he yesterday
freed five men jailed for nine months for intimidating mini-bus
drivers.
Sir Ivo yesterday ruled the jail terms were manifestly excessive and ordered instead the five be placed on $250 bonds to be of good behaviour for a year.
Today, explaining his action, he issued this statement:
In view of the manner in which two similar appeals with which I dealt yesterday have been reported on the front page today of one ut the les diNE PRZEZ I think it perhaps des- irable, if not essen- tal, that I should re- assert the reasons which prompted me to allow the appeals in those two cases and set aside the terms of imprisonment which had been im- posed by the learned magistrate.
Satisfy
It is, as I understand it a firmly establish- ed principle of peno- logy that no person should be sent to pri- son unless the nature of the case is such or the character and an- tecedents of the of- fender are such, that the court is satisfied that there is no other appropriate way of dealing with the of- fender except by the imposition of a prison sentence. That principle, in the case of persons under the age of 21, has been given statutory recognition and force by Section 109A of the Criminal Procedure Ordinance, which is in almost identical terms with English legislation. In so far as adults are con- cerned, it is only nec- essary to refer to a handbook entitled "The Sentence of the Court" issued for the benefit and assitance of all courts in the United Kingdom try- ing criminal
cases,
and issued under the auspices of the Home Office in which this sentence appears at p.40 of the handbook, and I quote:
in-
"Although there are cases where imprisonment is unavoidable, it is Increasingly com- ing to be regarded as the sentence to be imposed only where other me- thods of treatment have falled or are considered AUDIOTÍA IM. 27 before me yesterday I saw no reason what- soever to believe that, having regard to the nature of the offence, a prison sentence was the only the only ap- propriate sentence, Other methods of punishment were clearly available in- cluding, of course, the imposition of an appropriate fine with in the financial abi- lity of the offender to. pay; which fine, I necessary, could be paid over a period of time by way of ins- talments with, again, if considered neces-
sary, a term of im- prisonment in default of payment of the fine itself or of any ins- talment.
In the cases that came
before me I was, fur- thermore, particu- larly influenced by two factors: first, that the offenders had no previous convictions and had never been in trouble before and, secondly and it is an important consi- deration that the sentences had been imposed on the 4th August and that the appellants had been serving a teria of imprisonment since that But
factor, to persons who had never been in pri- son before should, in itself, have provided a sufficient lesson that offences of the kind o which they had plead- ed guilty could not be committed with im- punity.
Proper
It was in those circum- stances and for those reasons, that I con- sidered it proper to allow those appeals, set aside the orders of imprisonment and in lieu thereof order the appellants to en- ter into recognizance to keep the peace and be of good behaviour
and come up for sen- tence any time called upon within the period of the next 12 months. Some people appear to be under the impres- sion that a binding- over is a somewhat weak and ineffective way of dealing with persons convicted of relatively minor of- fences; it is nothing of the kind; it means precisely what it says, it means that the offender should he get into trouble and be
fod of the dura....on of the bond, he stall be brought before the court which dealt with the original offence and punished for that original offence
-- in addition, of course, to the further offence which he has com- mitted and which oc- casioned the breach of the bond. The
sentence of the court in respect of the original offence is therefore, in effect, hanging over the head of the offender for the period of the duration of the bond and it depends solely upon the offender's good behaviour as to whet- her or not he is to be punished for that original offence,
Six strokes for POLICE
young
N
THE Supreme Court today, the
Chief Justice Sir Ivo Rigby reduced from nine strokes to six strokes of the cane the corporal punishment imposed on two 17- year-old youths.
He also ordered the punishment on Yim Tse-ching and Tsang Chi-keung to be carried out immediately,
They were sentenced to nine strokes of the
cane each by Principal
thieves
Magistrate A, Garcia at
Central Magistracy but appealed to the Supreme Court.
The two were found guilty of grabbing a man and forcing him into his Wanchai flat
Blindfold
After tying the man in the kitchen, the youths ransacked his flat in Hennessy road but blindfolded and slashed him in the thigh when they were not satisfied with the loot they got.
RETURN PISTOLS
THE POLICE today admitted 46 plain- clothes officers have been ordered to hand in their service revolvers.
At first the police would not comment on reports of the hand- back, saying it was a secret "operational matter."
Then they said the hand-back was order- ed from the 46 officers in the vetting section because they are on non-operational duties.