Court fines Hong Kong lawyer HK$180,000 for ‘most disgraceful’ defence and frees his client
Counsel said to have stretched case to ‘leviathan of a trial’ spanning 19 days
A man walked free from an indecent assault charge on Monday after three judges expressed profound regret towards his defence at trial and upheld a draconian court order requiring his barrister to compensate prosecutors HK$180,000 for serious misconduct.
The Court of Appeal found it would be “unconscionable” for the court to allow Kishore Mohanlal Harjani’s conviction to stand, given the “wholly unacceptable way” his case was handled by counsel Mark Richard Charlton Sutherland before the trial magistrate.
The same court also dismissed Sutherland’s appeal against his wasted costs order, with the judges further ordering a copy of the judgment be served on the Bar Council for its consideration.
“The magistrate displayed considerable patience, accommodation, fairness and courtesy in the face of the most disgraceful and egregious display of conduct by defence counsel, over a protracted and sustained period, which any of us have ever encountered in any capacity in any jurisdiction before,” Mr Justice Andrew Macrae wrote on behalf of Mr Justice Michael Lunn and Mr Justice Derek Pang Wai-cheong in a 157-page judgment.
“We say, with profound regret, that counsel’s performance in this case was an egregious example of how cross-examination should not be conducted.”
The case centred on a single allegation of indecent assault. Harjani was accused of molesting a secretary inside a cinema on August 29, 2012.
