A Hong Kong appellate court has quashed the murder conviction of a jobless man who allegedly beat his girlfriend to death and hid her body under a mattress seven years ago, ruling that the trial judge had not properly directed the jury to fully consider the alleged perpetrator’s violent personality traits.
The Court of Appeal on Thursday ruled in favour of Law Wai-man, who was found guilty of murdering his girlfriend Lau Lee-chi in 2019, overturning his conviction and ordering a retrial.
Law, now in his mid-50s, argued in the 2022 High Court trial that he was provoked into beating his then 34-year-old girlfriend after the two had been quarrelling for a few days in 2019. Lau was found dead in a public housing flat in Tseung Kwan O on or around March 17, 2019.
The trial revealed that Law had a long history of drug abuse and was easily provoked when he increased his use of methamphetamine, known as Ice. He admitted that he was agitated at the time of the killing as he had taken a higher dose of the drug.
Law told police he had bound his girlfriend with a cloth beside a window after she began displaying hysterical behaviour two to three days before the killing. She was also a drug user.
He said he had punched and kicked her in the early hours of March 17, fearing her yelling would alert neighbours.
He then slept on a sofa and woke up to find her lying unresponsive on the floor. He decided to hide her body in the bottom of a bunk bed and cleaned up the crime scene.
Law pleaded guilty to manslaughter but argued for diminished responsibility, saying he was provoked to act abnormally at the time of the killing.
He also argued that he had a personality associated with violent behaviour, and that could have been compounded with the effects of Ice.
The appellate court noted that that such a personality trait was not introduced to the jury in time and therefore members might not have known to consider it as a potential factor in their assessment of Law’s culpability.
Reviewing the judgment by the trial judge, the appellate court also found that no clear direction was delivered to the jury to ensure that they were aware of the difference between voluntary and involuntary drug use.
Law, who used drugs voluntarily on multiple occasions, previously argued that his drug dependence made him unable to resist the use of the substance, which amounted to involuntary drug use.
According to legal principle, a defence on the grounds of diminished responsibility applies only if the drug use is proven to be involuntary.
In the trial judge’s directions regarding this key issue, he asked the jury to consider whether Law could control the use of drugs, or to what degree he was in control.
The appellate court said that the jury should have been informed that even though part of the drug use was voluntary, the defendant could still defend himself on grounds of diminished responsibility because the definition of “involuntary use” did not amount to “using drugs irresistibly and constantly”.
It granted Law’s appeal and overturned his conviction.
Even though Law’s guilty plea of a lesser charge of manslaughter was maintained, the three judges of the higher court unanimously ruled that “this court does not consider manslaughter an inevitable conclusion of this case”.
They ordered the case to be retried as the verdict is “for a properly directed jury to decide”.