COURT: The defendant Ng Yau-shing, or Cat is your other name, faced two counts of trafficking in a dangerous drug, contrary to section 4(1)(a) and (3) of the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, Cap 134, he pleaded guilty before a magistrate and is committed to the Court of First Instance of the High Court for sentence.
Admitted Facts
At the material time, the police conducted an anti-narcotics operation at Chak Sing House in Tin Chak Estate. The defendant was seen leaving Chak Sing House and he was intercepted. Upon enquiry, the defendant stated that he lived in Room 2003 of Chak Sing House and his girlfriend was there. So the police searched the defendant and, upon search, keys for the flat and two mobile phones and a plastic bag containing another plastic bag of 699 grammes of a mixture containing 550 grammes of heroin hydrochloride were found in a shoulder bag carried by the defendant. So that is the 1st charge.
The defendant was then arrested and cautioned. Under caution, the defendant admitted that he helped other people to deliver white powder for money. A search was then conducted in the flat in the defendant’s presence. The keys seized from the defendant’s shoulder bag were used to open the door of the flat. Upon search, 32 plastic bags containing 14.9 kilogrammes of a mixture containing 11.77 kilogrammes heroin hydrochloride and some packaging paraphernalia, including electronic scales, were seized from the defendant’s bedroom inside the flat.
Also inside the defendant’s bedroom were four plastic bags containing a total of 0.52 grammes of a mixture containing 0.41 grammes heroin hydrochloride were seized from the rubbish bin, a plastic measuring cup containing 0.03 grammes of a powder containing heroin, a plastic spoon containing 0.02 grammes of a powder containing heroin, and a metal spoon containing 0.01 grammes of a powder containing heroin were found from a paper bag placed under a desk. So therefore, a total of 14,900.52 grammes of a mixture containing 11,770.41 grammes of heroin hydrochloride and 0.06 grammes of a powder containing heroin were found in the flat.
The defendant was arrested and cautioned again. Under caution, the defendant admitted that he helped other people to deliver drug because he was unemployed. In the subsequent two video-recorded interviews, the defendant stated, among other things, the following under caution. He came to know a “Wah Gor” in a pub in Yuen Long in December 2020 to January 2021. Wah Gor offered a job to him and introduced someone called “Tank” to him, and the defendant gave his mobile number to this Tank.
Then in late February 2021, this Tank instructed the defendant to collect drugs from a private car in Yuen Long, and the defendant went and collected a rucksack and found that there were packages of drugs inside and he placed the drugs collected in the flat. And then he bought the packing paraphernalia himself. Then he weighed and repacked the drug and delivered it to Tank as instructed by Tank.
When the defendant was intercepted by the police he was on his way to deliver drug to Tank in the car park of Tin Chak Estate. He would receive HK$2,000 for each delivery. He had received a reward of 20,000 so far. One of the phones seized by the police was used for the drug delivery.
The total street value of the heroin in both charges was HK$18,922,800.
Those were the facts you have admitted, defendant.
Background and mitigation
According to the antecedents statement, the defendant was born in March 1983, so he is a single 40-year-old man and was living at that time with his girlfriend. He is not a first offender. He was sentenced to a detention centre for robbery in 2004, but I understand that had been a spent conviction, so I will treat the defendant as someone with clear record. He claimed to be unemployed at the time of the offence.
In mitigation, defence counsel Mr Steve Chui confirmed the contents of the antecedents statement. Mr Chui submitted that the defendant was working as a construction site worker earning about 20,000 to 30,000 per month. The defendant’s wife – called “wife”, but basically a girlfriend was diagnosed with stage 3 liver cancer in 2020. Due to COVID the defendant had less working opportunity and earned less and he needed to raise money for her treatment, so he committed the present offences. The defendant’s girlfriend passed away in January 2022 when the defendant was in custody.
The defendant is remorseful for what he had done, and he had been co-operative with the police fully. He planned to study with the Open University while serving his sentence, which he knows will be a long one.
The defendant himself has written to me expressing his remorse. He reiterated the situation of him losing his job because, in fact, both because of the social events in 2019 and COVID in the same period, and also that his wife had contracted liver cancer. He explained that he committed the present offences because of the need to raise money, but he also expressed that he realised that that was not really any excuse to commit the offence. He wished to bring out the fact that this is the first time that he had been involved in any drug-related offences and that he admitted his guilt right away, and he asked for leniency.
Mr Chui referred to the case of Abdallah and submitted that the starting point is between 26 to 30 years of imprisonment, and Mr Chui submitted that the role of the defendant was that of a courier and there are no other aggravating factors.
Consideration for sentence
Trafficking in a dangerous drug is a serious offence. A person convicted of this offence on indictment is liable to be fined $5 million and to imprisonment for life.
In the present case, both offences were committed on the same day and the facts were clearly closely linked in that the dangerous drug in Count 1 was obviously connected with the dangerous drug in Count 2. So the proper approach is to have regard to the total amount of dangerous drugs in Counts 1 and 2 to arrive at an overall starting point, and there are authorities for this approach like Chow Yu Chi, Cheung Kwok Leung and Wong To.
According to my calculation, the total amount of dangerous drug was 12,320.41 grammes. That is 550 of Count 1, and 11,770.41 in Count 2, adding together, but for the purpose of sentence I will discard the 0.41 and use the amount of 12,320.
According to the guidelines set in Abdallah, the amount of 12,320 grammes of heroin hydrochloride falls into the range of between 4,000 grammes to 15,000 grammes, with a starting point of 26 to 30 years. Purely on the quantity of the dangerous drug involved, 12,320 would attract a starting point slightly under 29 years because for 29 years the quantity involved would be 12,750.
The defendant was not a mere courier as submitted by defence counsel, nor was he a mere storekeeper. The defendant was actively involved in the packaging of the dangerous drug as well as storage and delivery of the dangerous drug. So having taken into consideration the role played by the defendant within the range of 26 to 30 years, I am of the view that a starting point of 29 is appropriate.
The defendant pleaded guilty at the earliest available opportunity, and he is entitled to the full one-third discount. So with the one-third discount, the sentence would be 19 years and 4 months. While I do not consider the defendant’s assertion that he needed to raise money for his live-in girlfriend’s medical expenses amounts to a humanitarian ground, I am nevertheless prepared to give him a slight further discount of 4 months so that the ultimate sentence is one of 19 years.
So for the actual sentence for both counts, the sentence would be 19 years, and both concurrently, obviously, and making a total of 19 years.