Chris Lau
South China Morning Post
5 September 2016
“A” was a police informant and, more importantly, a free man before he was framed by the very person he was instructed to spy on by authorities. After serving 33 months behind bars for a crime he did not commit, A has finally been released thanks to the solicitor advocates’ scheme and the efforts of University of Hong Kong legal scholar Eric Cheung Tat-ming.
A, whose identity could not be revealed for safety reasons, was arrested in 2012 for conspiring with Lam Hing to rob four people on various occasions in 2011. He was supposed to be spying on Lam for the police. But after Lam was arrested and pleaded guilty, the burglar then turned around and counter-accused A of being his accomplice.
A was found guilty and received an eight-and-a-half-year jail term for his involvement in the crimes. Lam received five years. Cheung, a principal lecturer at HKU who obtained the higher rights of audience in 2013, said the inmate came to the university’s free legal advice scheme after failing to secure funds to appeal his case from the Legal Aid Department where he was turned down for a lack of merit.
“But there is a huge non-disclosure problem,” Cheung said, recalling the moment he took the case. After changing the department’s mind, Cheung decided to represent the innocent man in the Court of Appeal last year... Click here to read the full article.
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