CRIMINAL CASE NO. 381 OF 2010
COURT: I have to sentence you for trafficking in dangerous drugs, you having pleaded guilty in the Magistrates’ Court.
The drug in question was heroin and the amount that you were trafficking in, in total, there were two different sorts of it, was 1,109 grammes.
It would have been explained to you that we sentence for drug trafficking according to guidelines. Those guidelines are based on the nature of the drug and the quantity of it and you fall into the guideline that runs from 600 grammes to 1,200 grammes, attracting a starting point of imprisonment after trial of 20 to 23 years.
You brought these drugs into Hong Kong. You were stopped at the airport. You had swallowed them, some 109 packets. It is an aggravation to bring drugs across an international border and I am obliged to add something to the starting point in respect of it.
I shall take a starting point of 22 years and add one year to it. That would be 23 years after trial. You know that you earn a one-third discount by reason of your plea of guilty and that produces a sentence of 15 years and 4 months.
I have deliberately been modest in the aggravation of one year. You could not have complained if I had made it as long as two years. The reason I have kept it thus is because I want to reflect what I have heard about you in mitigation. I know it has been explained to you that that can only have a limited effect and that is all I give it.
One of the advantages of entering an early plea and being honest with the police and the courts is that the mitigation advanced is more likely to be accepted, or certainly it is given greater weight, and I will deal with you on the basis that you are a hard-working decent man and that you have taken on the burden of looking after nephews and nieces who lost their parents, having died of AIDS.
In the circumstances, the sentence of 15 years and 4 months is the least one, I can pass consistent with the public duty I have to perform. It is a long sentence but you might just reflect on this, that if you had crossed other borders in South-East Asia you would not have been facing imprisonment. You would have been facing the death penalty. That is a sobering thought.