CRIMINAL CASE NO. 422 OF 2011
them contained heroin, 280 grammes of it; 26 packets contained 180 grammes of cocaine.
You will have been told that sentencing for drug trafficking in Hong Kong depends on guidelines which depend on the nature and quantity of the drug in question. Heroin and cocaine fall under the same guideline. Therefore, I can add the quantities together and it comes to 460 grammes. That puts you into the bracket that runs from 400 to 600 grammes, attracting a starting point after trial of 15 to 20 years.
I have listened to what has been said by your counsel in mitigation and I have no trouble in accepting what he asserts, that you are an otherwise decent man; you have a history of honest labour; you faced poverty due to hard times; you have a large family; you were offered the temptation and fell to it.
Obviously, the punishment you are going to receive, as you well know, is a harsh one and I do not forget that I have to deal with an international element because this was crossing borders, whether the drugs were for Hong Kong or China, and I am quite prepared to accept what you told me; they were going to China.
Accordingly, I shall put you at the bottom of the bracket. If you had been in the middle of the bracket, I would have, because of your role as a simple courier and nothing greater than that and with the available mitigation, I would have taken you down a bit. If I start, for just ordinary mathematical reasons, at the bottom, I can still take you down a bit and I do that, and that, in effect, soaks up the 6 months or so I had in mind as an aggravation for the international element. That still exists there. What I am saying in a rather convoluted way is that the starting point I am going to take overall is 15 years.
You earn a third discount for your plea of guilty. Therefore, the sentence I am bound to impose upon you is one of 10 years’ imprisonment.
That is designed to be the least sentence I feel I can pass in the circumstances because consistency is important and I have to be fair to others.