ONC Lawyers won a Court of Final Appeal (“CFA”) case for an appellant who was sentenced to 26 years’ imprisonment by the High Court in 2016 for drug trafficking.  

 

At trial, Chinese simultaneous interpretation was provided for some of the jurors upon request at the closing stage of the English proceedings with no Chinese record kept. The interpretation arrangement was held by the CFA to have deprived the appellant of a fair trial as subtle differences between languages might have influenced the instructions received by jurors hearing different languages, however high quality the interpretation may be. Thus, the appeal was unanimously allowed and retrial of the case was ordered.

 

To read the judgment of the case, please click here.

 

Relevant media reports:

HKFP

 

Citizen News

 

InmediaHK

 

Mingpao

 

Hong Kong Economic Times

 

Oriental Daily