When a watch shop robber asked a Hong Kong judge for the death penalty instead of making him do time
“A man convicted of larceny and robbery at Kowloon District Court yesterday asked the judge to hang him rather than send him to jail,” reported the South China Morning Post on November 11, 1962.
Wong King-hong and his accomplice “held up a watch shop in Kowloon yesterday and ran out with 37 wristwatches worth $7,000. They escaped on bicycles,” stated a Post report dated October 6.
“During the trial, Wong, who claimed he had been a police informer, said that if he went to jail, where ‘everybody’ knew him, he would be ‘surely killed’,” said a Post report on November 11.
“Since the hearing began on November 7, Wong has made several rather unusual requests of Judge T. Creeden”, including that “all news reporters leave the courtroom, but this was not acted upon”, that report said.
According to a November 8 article, Wong said that “he helped the police in the last two years, and if the story were published in the newspapers, ‘the convicts in prison may give me trouble’.
“Wong told the court that the present case against him was a ‘frame up’ by a detective and a man, Wong Yuen-loy. He added that he had been betrayed and that he never committed any of the offences.”
The convict even “tried to commit suicide in his cell”.
According to the November 11 story, Wong King-hong was found guilty of “robbery with aggravation, robbery with violence, and simple larceny” and sentenced to 10 and a half years’ jail, but “will serve a maximum of five years, as the terms are to be served concurrently”.
