XN000022-1996-01-31 — Page 29

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Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill

Following is the speech by the Secretary for Security, Mr Peter Lai, in moving the second reading of the Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill 1996 in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):

Mr President,

time.

I move that the Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill 1996 be read a second

This Bill, in conjunction with the Mental Health (Amendment) Bill 1996, seeks to achieve two main objectives. First, in cases involving accused persons who are unfit to plead in court, the jury should be empowered to determine whether the accused person did the act or made the omission charged. Secondly, in dealing with accused persons who are unfit to plead and who did the act or made the omission charged, or accused persons who are found not guilty by reason of insanity, the court should be able to exercise a wider range of disposal options. These options will include guardianship orders, supervision and treatment orders, and orders for absolute discharge. The Bill also provides for these disposal options to be extended to the magistracy. I shall explain these proposals in more detail.

At present, under the Criminal Procedure Ordinance, the only option to deal with an accused person found unfit to plead in court or not guilty by reason of insanity is to send that person to the Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre or a mental hospital for indefinite detention. Since an accused person found unfit to plead is incapable of being tried and there is no requirement for the court to determine whether such a person did the act or made the omission charged, it is possible that an innocent person can be detained in a mental hospital indefinitely because he suffers from a mental disability and is unfit to plead.

Such indefinite detention can happen no matter how minor the alleged offence is or how harmless the accused person may be. The period of detention may greatly exceed the maximum sentence for the alleged offence. Clearly, the present provisions in the law are far from satisfactory, because they do not allow sufficient flexibility of options for the court to properly deal with accused persons who are mentally disordered and are unfit to plead.