tim's experiment

Some well-justified praise for the legal machinery last week, when a man was convicted of murder under circumstances which tested the ingenuity and persistence of the prosecution team. There was no body, no scientific evidence of the kind which CSI has made so popular, and no sign of that staple of Hong Kong criminal proceedings, a confession. Nevertheless the defendant, a businessman accused of killing his mistress after his wife got wind of the relationship, was found guilty by the jury. No doubt this was what he deserved. It seems the prosecution relied heavily on the closed-circuit TV recordings of his comings and goings to the clandestine flat. This is not a completely unprecedented case. In the old Penguin Famous Trials series there was one case whose sole claim to fame was the absence of a body. It concerned a steward on a passenger ship who had what we would now call an “inappropriate relationship” with a lonely female passenger. She disappeared and investigators concluded that the steward had killed the lady when she threatened to reveal all. He then bundled the body out of a porthole. The steward was convicted and, after the barbaric custom of the times, hanged. The absence of capital punishment has taken some of the thrill out of murder trials but no doubt the latest Hong Kong one will merit at least a footnote in some history of such matters.

It leaves me wondering, though, why local prosecutors who can rise so splendidly to the occasion when required to make bricks without straw, make such heavy weather of matters which you would think were much easier. Look for example at the case of the Police Superintendent who was filmed taking a wild swipe at a cringeing member of the public; the video can be seen here: https://www.hongkongfp.com/2015/08/03/police-seek-advice-from-justice-department-on-superintendent-assault-case/

You would have thought that this case presented local legal eagles with the prosecutorial equivalent of a penalty kick against a blind goalkeeper. Nobody who has seen that video can be in any doubt about what happened. The victim is also publicly known and is apparently willing to give evidence. Yet no progress has been made on this matter at all. It has been considered at extraordinary length by the committee which oversees police complaints. The committee came to the entirely unsurprising conclusion that the superintendent had assaulted the protester concerned. But it is not customary for criminal proceedings to await the outcome of related police complaints. On the contrary defendants who have made a complaint usually come to trial long before the complaint has been unsubstantiated, as such complaints usually are.  What can be taking so long, one wonders.

Then there is the case of the Magnificent Seven, who appeared on television news beating and kicking a protester who was not engaging in any disorderly activity at the time but was lying on the ground bound hand and foot. The relevant footage, without commentary – judge for yourself – can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so1SdZmZuvc

Once again you would think that this presented something of a forensic sitting duck. There is no doubt who was involved, or what they did. The victim is willing to testify to his ordeal and I suppose the camera crew could also be recruited by a prosecutor who wished to take no chances. We have some hint as to what may be the problem here: according to the Secretary for Justice the matter is being considered by a Senior Counsel. This is apparently a time-consuming process and one has to wonder what the said counsel is taking so long over. Is he considering the argument, advanced in the superintendent’s case, that policemen on Hong Kong streets have a legal right to treat members of the public in a way which would be illegal if applied to a dog? Is he considering some exotic variation on self-defence, provocation, droit de seigneur?

In the absence of answers to these question we are left to wonder if a similar delay would have ensued had seven protesters been filmed beating the crap out of a policeman.