Top court reserves judgement in 2019 assembly case
The Court of Final Appeal on Monday reserved judgement in a case of seven defendants and their involvement in an unauthorised procession in 2019, with the arguments from the prosecution and defence centring on the issue of proportionality. Six former lawmakers – Martin Lee, Albert Ho, Margaret Ng, Lee Cheuk-yan, Cyd Ho and Leung Kwok-hung – and Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai had been found guilty of organising and taking part in the demonstration on August 18, 2019.  Police had approved an assembly at Victoria Park on that day, but banned a march out of the venue.  The Court of Appeal earlier acquitted them of organising the assembly, but upheld the participation convictions.  It also lowered by several months the defendants’ jail sentences, which ranged from suspended terms to up to 18 months. In the final appeal by the seven defendants, the defence lawyers argued at the city's top court that because police didn’t make any arrests on the day and the demonstration was peaceful, their subsequent arrests and convictions were “operationally disproportionate”.  They said the court should conduct proportionality tests when passing a verdict, arguing a conviction would be a form of restriction that infringes on the fundamental constitutional rights of the freedoms of assembly and expression.  The courts, they argued, must protect such rights as enshrined in the Basic Law and the Bill of Rights. The Department of Justice (DOJ) countered that there was nothing in the law to support a proportionality test at the conviction stage. Senior Counsel Benjamin Yu, for the DOJ, also argued the defence had not raised the issue before, and had no ground to do so now. “It’s not simply they were engaged in an unauthorised procession, it was also that they knowingly violated the prohibition by police,” Yu told the court.  The panel of five Court of Final Appeal judges, led by Chief Justice Andrew Cheung, reserved judgement. Four of the defendants attended the hearing. Lai and Leung, who are in custody over separate national security cases, did not attend. Cyd Ho, who had finished serving her sentence over this case, was also absent.