Chapter 6
Prosecution process
Defendant’s uncooperative stance
Although the defendant was eventually arrested after a bitter road chase, another fierce wrestle played out after he was brought to the ICAC Headquarters!
The first obstacle was about languages. Being extremely uncooperative after the arrest, the defendant pretended that he neither spoke nor understood Cantonese though he was proficient in it. He just refused to communicate with the ICAC officers.
There are two major languages in India: Hindi and Punjabi. The defendant claimed that he spoke Hindi instead of the Punjabi language used by the registered court interpreter present at the scene, therefore he could not understand what the investigating officers said. As a result, it took quite a long time for the officers to communicate with the defendant and interview him.
An identification parade was later arranged for the two complainants. The defendant and the other seven persons picked by himself from the people arranged by the ICAC would be asked to line up for identification by the complainants. During the whole process, the defendant continued to make things difficult by repeatedly raising objections: first not all of the persons arranged for the identification parade were of Indian descendent, and then his hair colour was blonder and so was different from those other Indian people arranged for the identification parade.
Since the foreman refused to take part in an identification parade with the persons arranged by the investigating officers, the complainants could only make the identification from a photo array.
In an identification parade, a total of nine persons, including the suspect and eight other persons bearing strong resemblance to the suspect in appearance, height, age, race, skin colour, etc., will line up in the identification parade suite for the witness to make an identification. The witness may even request them to make a sound to facilitate identification.
To ensure a fair and impartial identification process, the identification parade will be conducted in the presence of a Justice of the Peace and a legal representative of the suspect. The purpose of the identification parade is to enable the witness to identify the suspect in a strict and transparent manner to avoid wrongful conviction of an innocent person.
The suspect and his or her legal representative are entitled to raise two reasonable objections to the manner in which the identification parade is conducted, for instance, the other persons in the parade differ significantly from the suspect in appearance or race, or the position in the line arranged to be taken by the suspect is somewhat conspicuous. The officer-in-charge will put the objections concerned in writing and take remedial action as far as possible, and the whole identification parade will be video recorded for reference purpose.
The foreman strongly objected to the arrangement of an identification parade as he claimed that his appearance differed greatly from those of the seven persons in the parade. The ICAC could only resort to photo array identification. Similar to an identification parade, the procedure requires complainants to make identification from 12 photos (including that of the suspect) provided by the investigating officers. Generally speaking, the level of fairness and accuracy of a photo array identification is relatively lower than that of an identification parade.
The identification parades are taken place in the identification parade suite at the ICAC Headquarters, and the ICAC is the first law enforcement agency in Hong Kong using the one-way mirror facility for such purpose.
Complainants attending identification parades often worry about being identified by suspects and even exposed to the possibility of retaliation and personal danger. To encourage witnesses to attend identification parades and to dispel their anxieties, a one-way mirror is installed in the identification parade suite to ensure the concealed identities of witnesses. To further protect their identities, they are arranged to enter the ICAC Building through a passage different from that for the suspects.