HKSAR v. OGANA JEIAZEL OGANA

HCCC309/2009

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CRIMINAL CASE NO. 309 OF 2009

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Transcript of the Audio Recording
of the Sentence in the above Case

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COURT: It will have been explained to you long ago that sentences for drug trafficking in Hong Kong are based upon guidelines. The guidelines are based upon the nature of the drug and the quantity trafficked.

  You fall into the category that starts at 600 grammes and runs up to 1,200 grammes for heroin. After trial, that attracts a starting point of between 20 to 23 years’ imprisonment.

  Your case has the added aggravation that you were carrying heroin across an international border. The guideline case at this level indicates that aggravation would result in an increase in sentence of some 2 years. The amount of heroin you carried puts you over halfway into the bracket, which would produce a figure of 21½ years. Allowing for the aggravation, it would increase it to 23½ years.

  It would have been explained to you, along with the guidelines, that if you pleaded guilty, you would have had a one-third discount on the sentence. On the sentence you were facing, that meant a discount of nearly 8 years. You turned your back on that and you gambled on your dishonesty working. But the evidence against you was overwhelming and the result cannot be a surprise to you. By your dishonesty, you threw away a discount of 8 years by coming to trial. I suppose that was done out of desperation.

  You allowed your counsel to make substantial admissions. It made the conduct of the trial the easier but, even if you had not, it would have been a short trial and I appreciate that. But on the other hand, I am going to reward the admissions that you made.

  The discount of one-third is based upon expediency because the criminal justice system in any country, here as well as anywhere else, needs pleas of guilty to run properly and they need to be encouraged. But likewise, so does the conduct of trials which concentrate on issues and, in fact, there was only one issue of fact in the prosecution’s case, which is whether or not you took your rucksack off the counter. That was dealt with, with one question to the witness about it in challenge.

  So instead of taking that starting point for sentence of 23½ years, I shall discount it by a year. That, in my judgment, is a meaningful discount but, in the circumstances, it cannot be greater than that.

  Accordingly, the sentence I pass upon you is one of 22½ years’ imprisonment.

  It is a long sentence for a young man but, on the other hand, you did this with your eyes open; you knew what the risks were and you know the trouble and the misery heroin causes other people and you chose to profit from that trade. Not only that, if you had been caught where you started carrying these drugs, you would not have just been facing imprisonment, you would have been facing death.