Rex v. Hau Kang Po
Summing Up.
32.
1st May, 1940.
Gentlemen of the Jury:
Here we are at the last stage of a very short but none the
less serious case, for as you appreciate it concerns the life
or death of the man in the Dock.
He is charged with the murder, that is the deliberate intentional killing, of his younger brother in the hut that they occupied in this remote village. You have heard the
It is of evidence. There is very little direct evidence. course, as you will appreciate, the evidence of the widow and of the son of the dead man. Their story is that after what
must strike all of us as a most futile, stupid, little quarrel, the accused suddenly lost his temper, reached up to the cockloft, brought down a chopper and announced his intention of killing his brother and proceeded to do so, inflicting on his younger brother four savage head wounds, from the bleeding from which there is no question whatsoever that the dead man died.
There are, I repeat, only two witnesses and each speaks of a different part of the story; and you will bear in mind that when dealing with the evidence of young people like this little boy you must examine his evidence with great care and act on
it with hesitation.
On the other side we have had the evidence of the prisoner
himself and I am not going to take you all over it again. It is not long since we heard it, but you will realise that he has set up two separate and distinct defences.
The first is what Mr. Macnamara, only for a lack of a
better title for it has called "the defence of self-defence"
and the second one is the accused's own defence of "coma" and
you will unnerstand of course as sensible men, that the case