High Court judge Wilson Chan declines to comment on early retirement over plagiarism

High Court Judge Wilson Chan Ka-shun presided over a drug-trafficking case on Thursday ahead of his early retirement on Friday following repeated instances of judicial plagiarism.

As he left the High Court building with fellow judges Thomas Au Hing-cheung and Anderson Chow Ka-ming, Chan declined to answer questions from reporters about whether he had been pressured to retire early or whether his workload had played a role, saying only that he had "no comment."

Chan sentenced a Taiwanese man to 12 years and four months in prison for trafficking 890 grams of cocaine at Hong Kong International Airport in August 2019.

In delivering the sentence, Chan took into account the quantity of drugs involved and the cross-border element of the offense. He also granted the standard one-third reduction for the defendant’s early guilty plea to an alternative charge of conspiracy to traffic dangerous drugs. Two other defendants in the case had previously been acquitted by a jury.

Chan’s early retirement was requested by Chief Justice Andrew Cheung Kui-nung after Chan was found to have committed plagiarism in his judgments at least five times in recent years.

The Judiciary previously stated that appropriate arrangements would be made to minimize any operational disruptions and ensure court business continues smoothly.

𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗔𝗽𝗽 ↓