TNAG-0486-FCO40-551-Review-of-death-sentence-in-Hong-Kong-1974 — Page 43

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she took care of the child in this way

every day of the week

except Sundays and that there had never been an occasion upon

which the appellant called collect the child before 4 o'clock

in the afternoon. This testimony was of course in direct collision

with the appellant's statements to the police in which he had said that

he had collected the child at half past ten on the morning of the 17th.

Then there was the evidence of a Mrs. Chan who lived in the cubicle

next to that of the appellar and who said that while the police were

searching the premises on the 26th of March the appellant came to her

and asked her to tell the police, if they questioned her, that he had

been cooking meals and looking after his baby. Similar evidence was

given by an ex-police constable called Wong who was an acquaintance

of the appellant and who told the court that on more than one occasion

in April the appellant had come to him and said that he was in trouble

with the police and that he (the appellant) had told his wife to tell

a lie.

Such was the chain of circumstantial evidence produced by

the prosecution out of the matter made available by the police

investigations. The appellant did not give evidence at the trial and

no witnesses were called on his behalf. It should be added however

that, following upon an unsuccessful submission of no casc, Mr. Sedgwick,

for the defence, sought to introduce evidence from a Dr. Peng, a

Government psychiatrist emplyed in the Frisons Department, who had

examined the appellant at the request of the prosecution. The purpose

in seeking introduce this evidence was two-fold: firstly, to show that under hypnotic drugs coupled with methydrine (sometimes refer to as the "truth drug") the appellant had given to the doctor substantially the same account of his move.ents on the 17th of March as that wich he

had given in his various statements to the police; secondly, to prove

that in his statements under these condicions made to the doctor the

appellant had insisted that at the time of the murder he was in che cinema with his wife. The significance of this latter statement was, of course, that the appellant had claimed to have been in the cinema between 5.30 p.m. and 7.00 p.m. whereas the evidence in the case indicated clearly that the killing had occurred at between one and

two p.m.

The suggestion for the defence was, therefore, that if the accused really was the killer he would have known what hour to cover by way of alibi and would not have focussed his attention upon an