Hong Kong Case Law: Decisions & Judgments | LexChat

Hong Kong Case Law

Misdirection/bias
  • 30 Sept 2015

    香港特別行政區 訴 馬志強

    Citation
    香港特別行政區 訴 馬志強
    Court
    Court of First Instance
    Case number
    HCMA218/2015

    The appeal was allowed because the magistrate failed to address a material omission (the absence of any contemporaneous complaint to the police that the appellant claimed triad membership), relied on an unsupported and logically irrelevant geographic inference linking 九江街 to the appellant's church to bolster witness credibility, and gave undue favourable treatment to the second witness (including characterising him as "independent" and making encouraging remarks), such that the convictions were rendered unsafe; accordingly all convictions and sentences were quashed without ordering a retrial.