CRIMINAL CASE NO. 406 OF 2010
COURT: I have to sentence you for trafficking in dangerous drugs.
The drug involved was heroin, and the amount of it was 680 grammes. The heroin was of two kinds, but nothing turns on the difference between them.
You were stopped at the airport, having ingested 80 pellets which you later expelled.
You were frank to the police, telling them that you had come from Tanzania, that you had swallowed the pellets there, and it is contended that what you actually said, with the correct interpretation, was that it was marijuana or other intoxicating drugs or other psychedelic drugs that you understood that you had swallowed.
I will accept that basis that you put forward. It means that you did not know the exact nature of the drug that you had swallowed, but obviously, based on what you say you were saying at the time, you realised that if it was not marijuana, it would have been some other psychedelic or intoxicating drug, and such a factual situation would not take you out of the guidelines, because you understand, as it would have been explained to you, we sentence drug trafficking in Hong Kong on the basis of guidelines, which are based on the weight and nature of the drug in question.
I have received a written mitigation from your counsel, and by reason of the matters that he has set out there, I shall go to the bottom end of the bracket that the guideline gives when looking for a starting point.
Accordingly, I shall take a starting point of, initially, 20 years. There has to be an enhancement because of the international element in your case. That is not something I just decide to do; that is what the guidelines tell the courts and judges to do. But I will keep that enhancement as low as I can, and I will limit it to 1 year, increasing the starting point, therefore, to 21 years.
You will have known that we give a generous one-third discount from that starting point by reason of a plea of guilty, so that third would reduce the sentence to one of 14 years. That is the least sentence I can pass in the circumstances in the absence of any exceptional circumstance that would take you out of the guideline, and there is no exceptional circumstance here that would do that.
Hence, the sentence that I pass upon you for drug trafficking is one of 14 years’ imprisonment.