A legislator has called for the government plan to reopen unsolved criminal cases with the use of the latest DNA technology to be expanded to check if some convicts deserve exoneration.
Leung Yiu-chung said priority should be given to those who are wrongly imprisoned.
'Victims of old, unsolved cases have waited long enough, but the prisoners are spending their life behind bars waiting. Isn't that even more unfair?' Mr Leung said he had received many letters from prisoners proclaiming their innocence, but it was one robber's case that had left the deepest impression on him.
Yue Wai-fat was jailed for life after a jury found him guilty of robbing a Taiwanese woman of a $700,000 diamond ring in Causeway Bay in 1998 and stabbing her to death during a scuffle.
'The incident happened at 4pm, but eyewitnesses prove that he was at his home in Tai Kok Tsui half an hour later. There were a lot of unanswered questions in his case.'
Mr Leung said no DNA tests had ever been performed in his case and the defendant, who lost his appeal in 2001, was not aware DNA technology could help.