Bickett, Samuel Phillip, 35, is accused of assaulting an off-duty police officer and a man surnamed Lo at Exit F of the Causeway Bay MTR station on December 7, 2019. It is reported that on the day of the incident, a young man was involved in “tripping” at the Causeway Bay MTR station, and the off-duty police officer went after him and alleged that the defendant was involved in helping the “tripping” man to escape.
On March 31, 2021, American lawyers Bickett, Samuel Phillip attended the court hearing. (Photo by Liu Shaofeng)
The case was reopened in the Eastern District Court on Wednesday to deal with the defense’s application for termination of the hearing and disclosure of information, with senior barrister P.C. Choi representing the defense.
The court ordered the disclosure of information on the awarding of the Good Citizen Award to witnesses, which the prosecution refused to provide.
The defense filed a document in July 2020, stating that the off-duty police officers involved in the case had committed serious crimes at the crime scene. A week later, the police presented a HK$4,000 cash award for good citizenship to the witness, Lo Chi Keung. The defense criticized the practice as an attempt to influence the witness’s testimony.
The court heard last month, ordered the prosecution to provide details of the award, including how the entire application, the value of the prize, as well as relevant communication documents. However, the prosecution refused on Wednesday in court, saying that if, in the course of the investigation, the police or prosecutor did not consider the order to be material or relevant, no investigation would be conducted and therefore any material could not be disclosed.
The defense argued that the refusal of the prosecution and police to follow court orders constituted an abuse of process and criminal contempt of court.
The key MTR CCTV footage was destroyed by the prosecution: not intentionally excluded from the search for evidence
The defense argued that the film is not complete, it is difficult to a fair trial. The defense pointed out that the police obtained a search warrant to collect all the CCTV footage of the MTR Causeway Bay Station, and then returned to the court to apply for a narrower search warrant, the purpose is to exclude the defendant’s innocence of the CCTV footage to become evidence. Subsequently, because the police did not take the most relevant CCTV footage, the MTR eventually destroyed the footage according to the usual practice.
The prosecution explained that the police did not deliberately exclude the CCTV footage in question, but that a search warrant was required each Time the CCTV footage was obtained from the MTR. In the first search warrant, because the police did not specify which part of the footage to obtain, including the specific time, the police believe that the MTR will not accept, so did not use the search warrant. By the time the police applied for the second search warrant, the closed-circuit footage that captured the critical situation had been destroyed. But the defense argued that the police never actually tried to show the first search warrant to the MTR.
After hearing both sides, the magistrate adjourned the case to the 16th of next month.
Recent Comments