CRIMINAL CASE NO. 301 OF 2008
COURT: Cheung Lam-ming, you have been committed to this court for sentence following your plea of guilty in the Magistrates’ Court to a charge of trafficking in dangerous drugs.
The drugs involved were 506.91 grammes of a powder containing 427.27 grammes of ketamine.
You were seen carrying a plastic bag containing those drugs at about 2.14 am outside the staircase of a building in Fu Heng Estate in Tai Po on 24 June last year. This was the estate in which you lived.
The drugs were in four resealable packets. Your response when you were apprehended was that you had been caught red-handed and that you had nothing to say.
The retail value of the drugs in June 2008 was approximately $60,000.
You can have been in no doubt that very serious consequences would follow if you were caught with these drugs. Nevertheless, you chose to take that risk.
The appropriate starting point in this case is 7 years’ imprisonment. Your plea of guilty in the Magistrates’ Court entitles you to the usual discount of one-third.
I have taken into account all that has been said on your behalf in court by Mr Hung. I have also taken into account all that was said in the helpful report I have received from the Probation Service.
Very often in this sort of case it is said on behalf of a defendant that the pressure of debts led them to commit this sort of offence. In an offence as grave as trafficking in dangerous drugs, this can carry very limited weight. Financial pressure cannot provide any excuse for such an offence, and normally carries very little weight in mitigation.
However, in your case I am prepared to accept that because your mother was seriously ill and that you were the only person in the family in a position to do so, you took out loans from banks and a financial institution to pay for the funeral expenses of a family member and also the expenses of a medical operation for your grandmother. I am told that you managed to repay a significant sum, but had to take out further bank loans to cover the monthly interest payments on the outstanding loan. I am told that you still had a debt of about $100,000 and were being pressed by debt collectors.
I am prepared to accept that partially, at least, the need to meet the monthly repayments due on the loans led you to accept the offer of $2,000 reward to carry these drugs.
You are a young man of previous good character. If that good character had consisted merely of an absence of previous convictions, then no additional discount would be warranted beyond the one-third for your plea of guilty. In your case, I have read the letter from the Hong Kong Children and Youth Services Tai Po District Youth Outreaching Social Work Team. I take into account what I have been told about your active participation in community activities.
In my view, that participation, together with the circumstances that led you to commit the offence, warrant a small additional discount of 4 months on the one-third discount that would otherwise have been given to you. I have not taken into account any other matters.
Accordingly, I sentence you to 4 years 4 months’ imprisonment.