Top judge dies of suspected heart attack

Former High Court judge Peter Nguyen Van-tu has died of a suspected heart attack. He was 77.

Nguyen apparently fell near his bed at Baguio Villa, Pok Fu Lam, yesterday morning and was declared dead at Queen Mary Hospital. Arrangements will be handled by son Patrick.

Nguyen was born in Vietnam in 1943 and moved to Hong Kong with his family five years later.

He was called to the English Bar in 1970 and served as an assistant crown counsel before being promoted to crown counsel in the prosecution division of the Department of Justice from 1970 to 1974.

He was a council member of the Hong Kong Bar Association in 1984.

After 20 years of private practice as a barrister in Hong Kong, Nguyen was appointed director of public prosecutions in 1994 - the first Asian to hold that position in the city.

He left the legal department after the handover in 1997 and was appointed a judge of the Court of First Instance of the High Court from 1998 until his retirement in 2008.

Nguyen presided over many criminal cases when he was a High Court judge, including the Hello Kitty murder in 1999 in which a 23-year-old nightclub hostess was tortured, killed and dismembered by three men.

Her skull was placed inside a Hello Kitty doll. The three killers - Chan Man-lok, Leung Shing-cho and Leung Wai-lun - were convicted of manslaughter.

Nguyen sentenced them to life in prison as he described the three as worse than animals: "Never in Hong Kong in recent years has a court heard of such cruelty, depravity, callousness, brutality, violence and viciousness."

Leung's prison term was cut to 18 years after an appeal.

Family and friends of Nguyen were shocked to learn of his death as it was understood he attended a gathering with friends last week.

Cheng Huan, SC, described Nguyen as "a kind and gentle man" who had many friends in the legal and judiciary sectors.

"I knew him when I first commenced my practice here in Hong Kong more than 40 years ago," said Cheng. "We defended many cases together and he became a close friend."

A former director of public prosecutions, Grenville Cross, who was Nguyen's successor, said the top judge's passing was a great loss.

"He had a great gift for friendship and was a very generous man, and will be sorely missed by his many friends," Cross said.

Cross said he was one of Nguyen's deputies, and the former judge worked hard on ensuring the city's legal system had a smooth transition during the handover from British to Chinese rule.

"When I first came to Hong Kong, he gave me a lot of help and advice, and we became good friends. We had many cases against each other and he was a very good advocate, thorough and persistent, and he was always in great demand," he said.

"As a judge, he was polite to counsel and sensible in his rulings, and successfully handled all types of criminal trials, including commercial crime."

sophie.hui@singtaonewscorp.com