CRIMINAL CASE NO. 79 OF 2010
COURT: You have pleaded guilty before a magistrate to an offence of trafficking in dangerous drugs and have been committed for sentence to this court.
There is no need to outline the circumstances of your trafficking beyond saying that you were found by police officers to be in possession of packets of powder containing 151 grammes of ketamine with an estimated street value of about $21,000. You were being paid to deliver the drugs.
You know, and you heard some discussion about it this morning, that sentencing for the offence of trafficking in dangerous drugs is based, firstly, on the quantity of drugs being trafficked - in your case, the 151 grammes of ketamine - and secondly, on guidelines laid down by the Court of Appeal which sentencing courts such as this must apply.
The Court of Appeal has laid down various brackets of sentencing for different quantities of drug and the range of sentences for each bracket. Your case, 151 grammes of ketamine, falls into quite a wide bracket of 50 to 300 grammes for which a range of sentence of 6 to 9 years’ imprisonment is prescribed as being appropriate.
You have also heard me say this morning that sentencing is not just a mathematical exercise, though the structure of the guidelines might at times make it appear to be so. But you are entitled to be sentenced as an individual, even though this court must apply the guidelines of the Court of Appeal so that all traffickers are sentenced on more or less an equal footing. The question is where, in the 6 to 9 years’ range of imprisonment, your case should fall.
There is no particular aggravation in your case. The facts show you simply to be a courier within Hong Kong. You have no previous similar convictions save for one of possession of dangerous drugs.
The principal mitigation in your case is your plea of guilty which, as I know you have been advised, will lead to a reduction of one-third in the sentence which would have been imposed upon you if you had been convicted after trial.
Of course, that plea of guilty was entered in the Magistrates Court at the earliest possible stage. You are not one of those defendants who has waited until his case has been committed for trial, and even listed for trial here in a Court of First Instance before entering a plea of guilty at a late stage. Indeed, some defendants plead guilty on the day of the trial, when the jurors have been assembled and counsel has been instructed on both sides. We all know that to be the case.
Mr Liu, on your behalf, has urged the court to take this into account, perhaps by increasing the discount from the conventional one-third so as to show that there is a positive benefit to be gained by entering an early plea, given that such pleas operate greatly to the benefit of the administration of justice.
I have considered whether I can properly increase the discount for the plea of guilty, but I have to say that, under the present sentencing regime, I am satisfied that it would be inappropriate to do so. Such an approach could only be followed if the Court of Appeal was to review the scheme of discounts for pleas of guilty and it is a matter for the Court of Appeal to determine when, and whether, that should be done.
However, as I have already said, you are entitled to individual consideration and I do not regard my hands as being completely tied in the determination of what the starting point for sentence should be in your case.
I judge that the quantity of dangerous drugs which you were trafficking could justify a starting point of 7 years and 9 months’ imprisonment. However, in all the circumstances of your case, including that early plea, I intend to take a slightly lower starting point of 7 years and 6 months’ imprisonment, that is, 7½ years.
That will be reduced by one-third which means that the sentence I impose upon you for this offence will be one of 5 years’ imprisonment.