BETWEEN
ANNEX B TO XCR(75)
49
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG
(APPELLATE JURISDICTION)
CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 42 OF 1973
(1) CHENG PAK HEI (2) KWAN YIP CHUEN (3) LAM KWOK HUNG (4) WONG TUNG SHING
and
THE QUEEN
Coram: Huggins, Pickering & Cons, JJ.
Huggins, J.:
JUDGMENT
Appellants
Respondent
The four Applicants were indicted
for murder and the
jury found the case proved against all of them. However, against the first Applicant they returned a verdict of Not Guilty of murder
but Guilty of manslaughter on the ground of diminished responsibility.
All applied for leave to appeal against conviction, the first
Applicant having abandoned an application for leave to appeal against sentence and been granted leave to apply out of time for leave '
to appeal against conviction.
Notice was given by the first Applicant of eighteen
grounds of appeal. The other Applicants at first gave notice in
person but the grounds then stated were replaced by fourteen
grounds. Subsequently notice was given of no less than twenty-nine
additional grounds, which unfortunately were numbered from 1 to
29 instead of from 15 to 43 so that there has been repeated confusion
in the course of the hearing as to which ground was under discussion. Of the grand total of sixty-one grounds of appeal one was formally
abandoned, seven were not argued, one was in a form which made it
purely academic and several were repetitious of earlier grounds. It was conceded by counsel for the Applicants that some of the
1
others were not grounds upon which this court could properly
interfere although the points raised therein might have been taken
in support of a ground alleging that the verdicts were unsafe or
unsatisfactory.
The circumstances of the alleged offence were as follows. The first Applicant was the son of the Deceased. He had a