Sulu Sou declares last month’s conviction ‘null and void’

LAWMAKER Sulu Sou has declared last month’s conviction to be unlawful, arguing that his prosecutorial immunity protects him from standing trial for any crimes other than the one for which he was suspended. Sou says that his lawyer, Jorge Menezes, has described the judgment as both “null and void.”

On May 29, Macau’s Court of First Instance found Sou guilty of the crime of unlawful assembly and sentenced him and fellow political activist Scott Chiang to 120 days worth of fines.

Lawmakers in the Macau SAR normally enjoy prosecutorial immunity that prevents charges from being brought against them. However, Sou was suspended by Legislative Assembly (AL) intervention in December last year, which lifted his immunity and permitted him to stand trial, as he was accused of the more serious crime of aggravated disobedience.

This accusation was thrown out during the course of the proceedings, and Sou was ultimately found guilty of a different crime, for which he was not suspended.

But the young activist-turned- lawmaker is arguing that the deliberation that led to his suspension was based specifically on the crime of aggravated disobedience and cannot be extended to include other crimes.

“I was suspended by the Legislative Assembly so that my immunity as Legislator could be lifted, allowing me to undergo trial for an alleged crime of aggravated disobedience to a police order,” he wrote in a statement released yesterday.

“However, I was not found guilty or tried for that purported offence. [My lawyer and I] learned that the court tried me for, and found me guilty of a different offence: of organizing an illegal protest.”

“There is no deliberation of the AL lifting my immunity to be tried for a criminal offence of organizing an illegal protest,” the statement continued. “In this context, my lawyer informed me that the trial and the judgment breached the law, being null and void, because I had my immunity in place regarding any other offence, but the one the Legislators faced when they casted their vote. I could not have undergone trial for a different offence. And I was not found guilty for the offence pursuant to which my immunity was lifted.”

The lawmaker added that, if the court wanted to change the charge against him, prosecutors should have informed the Legislative Assembly and waited for Sou’s immunity to be lifted concerning the other offence. Without such legislative approval, Sou argued, the court does not have the lawful ability to swap the charges presented against him.

“Immunity is not lifted as a ‘blank check’,” argued Sou. “Legislators have discretion regarding whether to suspend a peer or not, and they vote in light of the specific offence at stake, as the debate [last year] showed.” DB