Mr James McGowan, instructed by Messrs Tang, Wong & Cheung
HCCC 269/2008
HCCC269/2008
IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE
HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION
COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE
CRIMINAL CASE NO. 269 OF 2008
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Before: Deputy High Court Judge Line
Date: 14 January 2009 at 9.44 am
Present:
Ms June Cheung, Senior Public Prosecutor of the Department of Justice, for HKSAR Mr James McGowan, instructed by Messrs Tang, Wong & Cheung, for the Accused
Offence:
Trafficking in a dangerous drug (販運危險藥物)
Transcript of the Audio Recording of the Sentence in the above case
COURT: Stand up, would you please, Mr Lam. I have to sentence you for trafficking in dangerous drugs.
The drug in question was cocaine which you were carrying to your own flat in 14 packets 143.84 grammes of it. There was packaging paraphernalia in your flat.
You are a 48 year old man with a clear record. You have been a taxi-driver. I have no reason to doubt the mitigation put forward that you had run up large debts and that is why you did this. You are not a drug addict yourself. I will accept that you were only, in effect, couriering these drugs.
I take into account you have no previous demonstrated connection to the drug industry and I can see there is no international element involved here.
It will have been explained to you that judges act on guidelines here. Those guidelines are based on the nature of the drug and the quantity of it. You fall just over halfway into the guideline of 50 -- 200 grammes attracting a starting-point for sentence of 8 to 12 years.
Where I start in that bracket is not just a question of mathematics though the mathematics does come into it. If we were not allowed to do that and have some minimal discretion in our sentencing we would not have been given guidelines; we would have been given a graph. For good reasons of policy the realistic limits on my discretion today are these. I either have a starting-point of 9 years or something bigger than that but stopping at 10. Those who guide us in these matters tell us that the one-third discount that you earn for your plea will be given to you whether or not, like you, you plead guilty at the earliest of stages, at committal, or whether or not you had had a jury waiting outside and only pleaded guilty on the morning of the trial.
I will not do any violence to that principle. You will have your one-third but I do not see why I cannot take the early plea as a small factor in assessing where I start within the bracket.
Exercising the little discretion I have left I shall take a starting-point of 9 years. You have the discount. The sentence is 6 years' imprisonment.
Court rises - 9.48 am
14 January 2009