CRIMINAL CASE NO. 56 OF 2009
COURT: Stand up, Susan Janolino Gevero. You have pleaded guilty to an offence of trafficking in dangerous drugs, namely 206 grammes of heroin hydrochloride, which was contained in a larger mixture. You had swallowed these dangerous drugs in 42 pellets, and you brought them into Hong Kong on a flight from Kuala Lampur concealed inside your body. You tried to get them past the Customs at the airport here in Hong Kong. You were intercepted by Customs officers and, after you were sent to hospital, you eventually passed those pellets containing the heroin. The dangerous drugs have a retail value in Hong Kong of approximately $265,000.
You have been told that here in Hong Kong the Court of Appeal has laid down sentencing guidelines for drug traffickers so that all such offenders are sentenced on the same basis. It is important, and indeed fair, that the consistent approach is taken with all offenders. The starting point for sentence is fixed according to the narcotic quantity which is being trafficked, that is to say in your case the 206 grammes of heroin.
Your case falls at the lower end of the bracket for quantities involving 200 to 400 grammes, for which a sentence of 12 to 15 years’ imprisonment is prescribed by the relevant Court of Appeal guideline. I judge that the minimum sentence in your case, before discount for your mitigation, should be 12 years’ imprisonment. There is no basis on the material before me for departing from those guidelines, as has been urged by counsel on your behalf. It would be wholly inappropriate to take a starting point, that is the sentence before discount for mitigation (the sentence which would have been imposed upon you if you had been convicted after trial) of 8 years’ imprisonment. I cannot even begin to take such an approach.
The standard discount for your mitigation is one-third from that 12 year sentence. That deduction relates primarily to your plea of guilty, but also to some of the other matters mentioned on your behalf by counsel, Miss Ody Lai.
I am bound to say that I find the account of how you first came to be engaged in trafficking these dangerous drugs into Hong Kong, given for the first time in court today, to be inherently improbable. But I do not have to decide whether it is true or not because I am satisfied that such an account could have no impact on the appropriate discount from the starting point. In gist, it is said that you were working in Malaysia, that you came upon the drug traffickers by chance whilst they were packing the drugs, that you were then prevailed upon to swallow the drugs and transport them out of Malaysia as payment for your passage home to the Philippines.
I note that you are 35 years of age, married and a mother of a 13-year-old boy. I note the contents of the letters of mitigation from your husband and son and other family members, and people who know you. These matters, taken together with your guilty plea, result in that one-third discount from the 12-year starting point.
It is urged on your behalf today that the discount should be increased from one-third because you have given some information to the Customs & Excise concerning drug traffickers and their methods in Malaysia. This is not a case, I am assured, for special procedures concerning those who have given the information to investigating authorities and the handling of their cases in court. Although you initially declined to be interviewed on 23 August, I am told you gave the names of two persons in Malaysia. The information was not of use to the authorities in Hong Kong.
I am satisfied that despite what has been said to me today there is no basis whatsoever for me to increase the one-third discount for your plea of guilty and the other personal mitigation available to you, such as your clear record.
Thus the sentence that I actually impose upon you for this offence is one of 8 years’ imprisonment. If that sentence is thought in any way to be harsh, it should be seen in the context that you brought these drugs into Hong Kong on a flight from Kuala Lampur, where if you had been caught trafficking even a fraction of this quantity you would have been facing a possible death sentence. That is the risk that you were taking, and in that context 8 years is a moderate sentence.