An American corporate lawyer who was deported from Hong Kong after serving prison time for assaulting a plainclothes police officer during the 2019 protests said he has applied to the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal to continue challenging his conviction.
Samuel Phillip Bickett, 38, a former compliance director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, was charged with “assaulting a police officer” during the Anti-Extradition Law Movement in 2019 and was sentenced to four and a half months in prison.
Although Bickett completed his prison sentence, he maintains his innocence and said the prosecution was politically motivated. Even after being deported to the United States in late March, he says he intends to challenge his conviction up to the Court of Final Appeal.
Meanwhile, he encourages donations to his cause as the appeal could cost up to $89,000.
Bickett: Defendant’s Point of View Not Considered by the Courts
The appeal documents (pdf) raised many questions and pointed out procedural anomalies during his hearing. For example, neither the trial court nor the Court of First Instance considered the rationality of self-defense from the defendant’s perspective, but instead focused on the motives of off-duty police officer Yu Shu-sang. Also, the courts appeared biased in many instances.Bickett’s Sentence
Bickett served more than six weeks behind bars before the High Court granted him bail last August pending his appeal, but he returned to jail in February to serve the remainder of his sentence after the court dismissed his appeal, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.Following the court’s decision, Bickett served another six weeks before he applied for early release on the grounds of good behavior, successfully reducing his original 4 and a half month sentence by one-third.
The High Court rejected Bickett’s self-defense claim. Instead, the judge found it “entirely natural and appropriate” for the officer to strike the defendant with the metal rod to stop the latter from snatching the weapon, especially when he was overpowered and outnumbered by a hostile crowd, according to SCMP.