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in times like that people don't really care what happened to
them a few days earlier, but what we do know is that having
made some anasing and quite palpably incorrect statement,
during the course of his long examination on the 1st October,
he, the following morning, when he seemed to be a little better, made other statements which were diametrically opposite to
his former ones. Mr. Chen apparently on the principles of the
curate's egg says the statement is good in parts, and partly
reinforced by the magistrate's quite erroneous statement that
Leung Ki had corrected his statement on the second morning,
all he had done was to alter it, has commended to your favourable consideration a few hazy excerpts from that long
statement which tell in favour of the accused man. You are
bound to take that statement as a whole. If you accept that
portion of it in which he says that he began the fight, that
he struck the accused man with his clenched fist, then I
think you are equally bound to accept his statement that the
fight took place between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., that it took
place in Yu Yuen Street and that his injuries were inflicted
by himself with an iron bar. It was the proper procedure
on the part of the authorities to get a statement from a man
who was grievously wounded, a man who on medical certificate
was unable to travel but was able to answer questions, and
the doctor was not compelled or called upon to certify to
more than that. He has told us that during portions of that
examination Leung Ki was not in control of his senses. I
think you will not regard it as an unreasonable attitude to
take towards that statement to say that as rational men it
would be safer for you to discard the whole of it rather than
decide from any angle the guilt or innocence of anybody on any
statement made by Leung Ki in such extremity.
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