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HCCC 9/2013
IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE
HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION
COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE
CRIMINAL CASE NO 9 OF 2013
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HKSAR |
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Cheung Yiu-wing (張耀榮) |
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| Before:
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DHCJ Stuart-Moore
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| Date:
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14 March 2013 at 10.03 am
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| Present:
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Mr Harish Hariram Melwaney, SPP of the Department of Justice, for HKSAR
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Ms Audrey Patricia Campbell-Moffat, instructed by Y C Lee, Pang, Kwok & Ip, assigned by DLA, for the defendant
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| Offence:
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Trafficking in a dangerous drug (販運危險藥物)
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Transcript of the Audio Recording
of the Sentence in the above Case
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COURT: The defendant, aged about 23 when he pleaded guilty at the Eastern Magistrates’ Court to this charge of trafficking in a solid containing just over 40 grammes of cocaine, is someone whose record, for present purposes, is not directly relevant and I shall ignore it.
He has confirmed his plea of guilty and, through his counsel, he has expanded upon the facts which were also agreed. In short, the defendant was seen acting rather furtively at the Lok Ma Chau Border Control Point and, as a result, was searched. The cocaine was found in two separate wraps and he made out to the arresting officers that he was in possession of the cocaine merely for the purposes of personal consumption.
It is perfectly clear that this was not a true account because the value of this cocaine was $51,086 approximately, and it emerged in a later interview that the defendant had been unemployed for about two or three months. He told police, again in a story which is now not adhered to, that he had used the whole of his $40,000 savings to purchase these drugs in order to go to the mainland and have fun with friends.
Ms Campbell-Moffat, in a very eloquent address on the defendant’s behalf, has made it plain that this actually was trafficking in the true sense because what actually happened was that a friend of the defendant’s got him to take drugs across to Shenzhen and he was expecting to be paid about $5,000 for the job.
Under the guidelines in The Queen v Lau Tak Ming & Ors [1990] 2 HKLR at 370, as applied in Attorney-General v Pedro Nel Rojas [1994] 1 HKC 342, the sentencing band for 10 to 50 grammes of cocaine falls into the 5 to 8 year bracket.
What I propose to do in this particular case, having regard to all the circumstances, giving full credit also for a plea of guilty, I will take a starting point of 7 years’ imprisonment and impose the sentence of 4 years and 8 months.
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