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Now, since we adjourned a few minutes before one
I have been thinking how best I could give you in simple
and yet compendious form the law applicable to this case,
because my task is more difficult than it otherwise might
have been, for it will be my duty, painful or otherwise,
to explode in the course of my charge on the law, certain
of Mr. Chen's apparently pet theories which are not in my
judgment, legally well founded.
As I say, I have been thinking it over and the
conclusion that I have come to is that the simplest way
to put the law before you would be to give you a necessary
and perhaps happily very brief resume of the story as it
is told first by the witnesses for the prosecution and
secondly by the prisoner himself and then apply the law
to the different possibilities that emerge from those two
stories. That I think will give us the complete review
of all the legal possibilities in this case and will, I
trust, give us an intelligible one that is easy for all
of us to understand. And so gentlemen, at the risk of
being tiresome and reiterative we go back again to the
story we have heard almost ad nauseum from witnesses for
the Crown and witnesses for the accused all yesterday and
today.
The story of course begins with a small boy, Chan Kam
On. Unlike so many of us he had been not only naughty but
lucky. Having tried a little gambling in his immature years
he had come out on the right side, and that of course is
one of the worst things that can happen to any young people;
so it was not a bad thing that he had to wait a whole year
for his money.
When that year was over the thought "Well,
this is foolish - the prisoner owes me 50 cents and I see
no reason why I should not have it," so he began to dig