Sixtus Leung Appeals Legco Storming Conviction

The High Court on Monday reserved judgement on an appeal from ousted lawmaker Sixtus Leung over his storming of a Legco meeting in November 2016.

Leung is appealing his conviction and sentence of unlawful assembly, after a magistrate jailed him and several others for four weeks for trying to rush into a meeting to take his oath of office. He was subsequently disqualified for an invalid oath.

Leung's counsel, Douglas Kwok, argued the trial magistrate made a legal mistake in ruling that Leung didn't have a legitimate belief that he had a legal right to join the meeting.

He argued his client was illegally stopped by security guards executing an unlawful order from the Legco president, as Leung was still a lawmaker-elect at the time and had the right to attend the meeting.

Kwok said for conviction, the magistrate needed to be satisfied that Leung had intended to breach the peace.

"[Leung and others] did not punch anyone, they didn't go after the security guards. They didn't lynch," Kwok told the court.

However, the government's lawyer, Jonathan Man, argued that Leung and others had pushed past the guards, and they didn't stop even after some of the security staff fainted and got injured.

The violence was "so radical and excessive" that it was surely "unlawful", Man said, adding Leung's intent did not matter.

Judge Wilson Chan adjourned the ruling to a later date and extended the bail for Leung.