COURT: Defendant, you have pleaded guilty to a single charge of trafficking in dangerous drugs, contrary to section 4(1)(a) and (3) of the Dangerous
Drugs Ordinance, Cap 134, Laws of Hong Kong.
The particulars being that you on 21 May of last year at Hong Kong International Airport, unlawfully trafficked in 596.83 grammes of cocaine.
The Summary of Facts which you have agreed are straightforward and describe how on the afternoon of 21 May of last year you arrived at the Hong Kong International Airport Customs Arrival Hall from Bogota Columbia. After a personal search on you, you were suspected to have concealed drugs inside your body. Accordingly, you were taken to hospital where X-rays confirmed the presence of foreign bodies. Over the next few days, you excreted a total of 94 pellets which contained the cocaine being the subject matter of the charge.
You are 47 years of age, a Columbian national, married with two daughters. You were persuaded, I am told, to swallow these pellets and bring the drugs into Hong Kong for a reward of US$9,000 which you agreed to do as your income as a self-employed driver, I am told, was unsteady and you were in need of money to provide for yourself and your family. The temptation was simply too much for you.
An aggravating feature of this case is of course the very fact that you brought these drugs into Hong Kong for the purposes of distribution. Accordingly, I must take this into account in sentencing you.
Having said that, to your credit, you have pleaded guilty to this charge which is the only mitigating feature of this case and I will afford you the full one-third discount in sentence to reflect this fact.
In terms of sentence, the case of The Queen v Lau Tak Ming [1992] HKLR 3 establishes the fact that for trafficking in between 400 to 600 grammes of cocaine, the starting point ranges between 15 to 20 years’ imprisonment. You fall very close to the top end of that scale.
Taking everything into account, I will take 19 years’ imprisonment as my starting point. I will enhance that by one year to 20 years to take account of the aggravating feature that I have identified. I will discount this sentence by one-third to take account of your plea of guilty, arriving at a sentence of 13 years and 4 months’ imprisonment.