Simon Westbrook SC (韋仕博 資深大律師) Said To Be Rude and Distasteful and Displaying Poor Advocacy

HKSAR v. KULEMESIN YURIY AND OTHERS (CACC19/2010)
Before: Hon Stock VP, Lunn JA and Saw J
Date of Judgment: 14 December 2011

Hon Stock VP:

496.  I wish to add some words of my own – with which the other members of the Court concur – about the conduct of the proceedings in the court below...

509.  The question pressed by Mr Westbrook was not a question; it was a comment.  But more significantly, the remark to the witness “I’m not interested in your explanation” was rudeness itself delivered by counsel clothed with the authority of his professional robes to a person in a wholly unequal position.  The judge should not have permitted it.  The witness should have been allowed to explain himself then and there; and the objection that prosecuting counsel was hectoring and simply upsetting the witness was an objection well-founded.

510.  Cross-examination of the type displayed in the passages I have reproduced, apart from constituting poor advocacy, is never permissible. It is not permissible in respect of any witness, let alone of a defendant facing a charge which, if proved, might deprive him of his liberty and ruin his career; let alone of a 62-year-old man of previous good character providing evidence in difficult circumstances and doing so in a perfectly courteous manner; a man who simply had to take the rudeness dished out to him.  This should never happen.  It is distasteful.


(Source: http://legalref.judiciary.gov.hk/lrs/common/search/search_result_detail_frame.jsp?DIS=79504&QS=%28The%2Bquestion%2Bpressed%2Bby%2BMr%2BWestbrook%2Bwas%2Bnot%2Ba%2Bquestion%29&TP=JU)