吳重儀

English

Miss Debbie Ng Chung-yee is a magistrate in Hong Kong, born in Hong Kong. She obtained an LL.B. from the University of Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom in 1997 and a Postgraduate Certificate in Laws from the University of Hong Kong in 1998, followed by LL.M. degrees from the University of London in 1999 and the University of Hong Kong in 2007; she was admitted as a solicitor in Hong Kong in 2001. From 1992 to 1997 she served as a court prosecutor in the then Legal Department, and from 2003 to 2006 she was a Manager (Enforcement) and Assistant Solicitor at the Securities and Futures Commission. She was appointed a Deputy Special Magistrate in 2002–2003 and 2006–2007, a Special Magistrate in 2007 and a Permanent Magistrate on 20 November 2014, by the Chief Executive on the recommendation of the Judicial Officers Recommendation Commission. Ng's experience spans prosecution, financial regulation and the judiciary: she began with prosecutorial work in the Legal Department, moved to enforcement at the SFC and then joined the Judiciary, giving her knowledge of both criminal prosecution and market regulation. The Judiciary issued a written response to a complaint against her: a dedicated judge panel found the complaint not established but held that she had made a serious error in the exercise of her sentencing function — she had remanded a defendant to the Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre for reports although the defendant had never raised any issue as to his mental state, which the panel considered placed heavy pressure on the defendant and amounted to a wrongful exercise of judicial power; it recommended that the Chief Magistrate remind her to reflect and never repeat such a mistake. The magistracy is Hong Kong's court of first instance for criminal matters; all judges and judicial officers are appointed by the Chief Executive on the independent recommendation of the Judicial Officers Recommendation Commission, under the Basic Law. She has since sat mainly at Tuen Mun Magistrates' Courts, and her path from prosecutor to regulator and then to magistrate reflects the diversity of the sources from which Hong Kong's judicial officers are drawn.