In April 2022, Dr. Zhuang, a senior executive of the Hospital Authority, and her doctor husband were arrested at the Aeon Supermarket in Whampoa Gardens. The two were suspected of stealing supermarket goods with a total value of approximately $1,600. The two were convicted of theft in April last year and fined $5,000. They later appealed to the High Court and spent heavily to hire four barristers to form an all-star lineup, including well-known senior barristers at the SSR level. However, the appeal failed. The court The original judgment is upheld. To be honest, I was a little shocked; spending millions to form an all-star team, but they were all punished with a fine of only $5,000? Being rich is not something you can show off, so how can I “educate” my customers in the future? No, no, you must have a deep understanding of why "I can't get rid of it even if I hit it hard"!

The verdict stated that the defense of the two defendants at the original trial was that they were absent-minded at the time of the crime, so they accidentally missed the goods involved in the self-service payment machine, and they did not intend to steal. To be honest, I have committed this kind of negligence myself (Lishen: I immediately returned to the supermarket to pay after I found out, and I was not arrested) (Lishen’s Lishen: This article was written by lawyer Dai. If you have any questions, please contact him. ), and the lawyers in our team have also defended the defendant in such cases: the client leaked several items in the same supermarket on three different days and was charged with three counts of theft. As a result, we won the battle and the client was acquitted of all three counts of theft. So what is the difference between it and the doctor case? Is it possible that we can win cases that senior counsel cannot win? I certainly hope so. But in fact, there is an extra difficult point in this doctor case: the two doctors confessed after being arrested and warned, saying respectively, "Ah Sir! I stole these from my own food" and " These 10 items are all stolen from me.”

First of all... How greedy a person is to repeatedly emphasize that he must eat the things he stole when he was arrested? Are you Kirby? But this kind of sentence is very common in supermarket theft cases. I can’t explain it, but why do you think it is? It is a big problem for all criminal lawyers if the defendant confesses after being warned, but later "reverses" and wants to plead not guilty. It is not easy to overturn a confession. Generally, it is necessary to prove that the law enforcement officers behaved in an "intimidating" manner or that there was procedural unfairness, causing the defendant to make an involuntary confession. In the doctor case, based on the news related to the original trial and the reasons for the appeal, the two doctors claimed that their confessions were misled by the police officers.

They refer to:

• They told the police officers who attended the scene to investigate that they had no intention of stealing or that there was a misunderstanding. However, the police officers said that it did not matter whether they had intentions or not. As long as the goods were not picked up and payment was not made, it was stolen. The doctor believed the police officer's words and believed that even though his behavior was just an honest mistake, he had committed the crime of theft.
• A police officer pointed out to them that there was no need to keep a record of the incident, and a fine would suffice.
  After discussion, the two doctors believed what the police said, so they cooperated with the police in taking a statement, and "according to the police's instructions" admitted that they committed the crime out of greed, and signed the relevant confession documents without looking at them. The doctor must be too busy to watch the show. The first sentence of any character in the show when he is arrested is "I won't speak until my lawyer arrives." Haven't they seen it? Anyway, do you think what the doctor said is reasonable?