Ex-student gets leave to appeal for sentence cut

The court of final appeal has allowed former Polytechnic University student Lui Sai-yu to challenge his five-year jail sentence for sedition, arguing that he should enjoy a one-third deduction due to his guilty plea.

It will be the first appeal against a national security sentencing to be handled by the top court on August 9.

The 26-year-old appeared before permanent judges Roberto Ribeiro, Joseph Paul Fok, and Johnson Lam Man-hon yesterday.

In granting the appeal permission, Fok said he would discuss two points of law, covering articles 21 and 33 of the national security law.

Article 21 of the law states: "If the circumstances of the offense committed by a person are of a serious nature, the person shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than five years but not more than 10 years."

Article 33 lays out three situations for a possible lighter penalty: if the person had voluntarily halted committing offense, voluntarily surrendered, or reporting an offense committed by somebody else.

The court is to consider whether the minimum prison term is mandatory and whether the three conditions were "exhaustive" and if it was "permissible" to reduce the sentence.

Lui was a first-year student at the time of his prosecution in 2020.

He pleaded guilty to inciting secession by managing a channel on messaging app Telegram with another man between June 30 and September 24, 2020. He was also convicted of selling weapons on the channel.

In April 2022, Lui was jailed for three years and eight months over his guilty plea initially, but was handed a five-year term in the end, as district court judge Amanda Woodcock was reminded of the "serious nature" of the offense.

Lui later filed an appeal, but his bid was shot down in November.

In the appeal court's written ruling, the three-judge panel, high court chief judge Jeremy Poon Shiu-chor and appeal justices Derek Pang Wai-cheong and Anthea Pang Po-kam said Woodcock had classified the case as of a "serious nature."