Wrongly convicted activist cleared

An Education University student had his name cleared when the high court ruled that he had been wrongfully convicted of assaulting police in September 2019.

Ka Wan-lung, 20, won his appeal, although he had completed his sentence at a detention center. He could be compensated for wrongful conviction.

High court judge Judianna Barnes Wai-ling ruled in favor of Ka yesterday, saying a lower court erred when convicting him.

Ka had pleaded guilty to causing nuisance in public places for blocking MTR train doors with an umbrella at Lok Fu station on September 2, 2019, during the MTR non-cooperation movement amid the anti-fugitive bill unrest.

He was also convicted of one count of assaulting a police officer and was sentenced to a detention center at Kwun Tong magistrates' courts this January.

During the trial, magistrate Minnie Wat Lai-man was presented with news footage showing police chasing after a man dressed in black and wearing a green mask.

However, the man who ended up being caught by police was dressed in black but wore a black facial covering, Ka's lawyers said in the appeal.

As she handed down her judgment yesterday, Barnes believed Wat had mistakenly thought the one in the green mask chased by officers was Ka, and therefore believed the footage captured what happened after Ka assaulted an officer.

However, Barnes defended Wat, saying the wrong judgment was "understandable."

Barnes said she had to watch the footage repeatedly before she found that Ka was not the person being chased, as he had also appeared at the scene at a similar time as the chase.

According to a government reply to the Legislative Council in 2014, an ex gratia compensation could be payable to a person that has spent time in custody following a wrongful conviction or charge resulting from serious default by the police or other public authority.

Barrister Albert Luk Wai-hung said Ka has grounds to apply for compensation as he was wrongly convicted.

"They were obviously two different persons, which means the police arrested the wrong guy and the magistrate wrongly convicted him," Luk said.

He added that Ka might get a bigger compensation compared to if he got a jail sentence as he served in a detention center where he experienced more "hardship."

But Luk also said whether Ka was sentenced to detention center due to one conviction or two convictions would not make much of a difference.