COURT: Just after half past three in the afternoon on 6 May this year, police were carrying out an observation in the vicinity of a public toilet in Mai Po Lung Road in Lok Ma Chau, when the defendant was seen leaving those toilets. After he had been intercepted, he was found to be in possession of three plastic bags which he admitted to the police contained “K Chai”. He said he had met someone at an amusement centre who had asked him to delivery the drugs and his reward was to have been $3,000. He had gone to the toilets to collect the drugs, following the instructions he was given over his mobile telephone. The total of just under 3 kilogrammes of powder contained 2.31 kilogrammes of ketamine, which is valued at about $374,220.
The defendant is 17 years old. He has no previous criminal history of any relevance and he has pleaded guilty. Beyond that, there is really no mitigation.
The defendant had been entrusted with a remarkably large and valuable consignment of drugs. It would be naive to think that he was a total stranger to those who enabled him to traffic in this amount of ketamine and equally naive to believe that the defendant was, despite his age, completely unaware of the huge risk he was taking.
Following the sentencing guidelines in SJ v Hii Siew Cheng [2009] 1 HKLR and Digest at page 1 and the more recent sentencing guidelines set out by the Court of Appeal in HKSAR v Sin Chun Kin [2013] 1 HKLR and Digest at page 62, where I am satisfied the court was giving judgment to provide a set of guidelines for larger quantities of ketamine than those described in the decision in Hii Siew Cheng, a sentence of between 18 and 19 years imprisonment is recommended for between 2,000 and 2,5000 grammes of ketamine. The court considered, in making its decision, the case of HKSAR v Ng Sui Kam reported at [2012] 1 HKC 1, a decision that was, of course, peculiar to itself. The guidelines in Sin Chun Kin were designed for wider use.
It is always an unpleasant duty to have to deal with a person as young as the defendant on a charge as serious as this, however youth has, for a long time, not been regarded as a matter of any real consequence in cases involving drug trafficking. Silke J, the Vice President of the Court of Appeal, gave the judgment in Lau Tak Ming [1992] HKLR 370 and, at page 386, touched upon this aspect in regard to heroin trafficking when he said:
“It must be borne in mind that these are offences of the utmost gravity and may well result in mitigating factors, which for less serious offences could lead to a discount, having little weight. By this we mean age and disability, though extreme youth may call for special consideration. Drug dealers are notorious for attempting to illicit sympathy from the courts for their middlemen by the use of the blind, the maimed, the halt, the young and the aged, in the carrying out of their nefarious trade.”
Those words are equally relevant today, even though they now refer to a drug which has become a scourge today when, when those words were spoken, it had probably not even been heard of as a drug used by human beings.
Major drug trafficking in most countries around Asia deal with such trafficking in a more draconian and much more final way than in Hong Kong. If the sentencing bands appear heavy, they have only to be compared with what would probably have happened to similar offenders in courts in this region of the world.
The lowest starting point I can properly take, in view of present authorities, is one of 18 years imprisonment, which is the sentence that would have been imposed if the defendant had been convicted by a jury after trial. As it is, he has pleaded guilty and he will receive full credit for so doing. Would you stand please.
Your sentence is 12 years imprisonment.