R. v. FONG MAN KWONG

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL

1996, No 113
(Criminal)

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J U D G M E N T

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Bokhary, J.A.:

1. On January 22 this year, this applicant, a man in his late 40's, was convicted by HH Judge Bailey in the District Court on one charge of trafficking in dangerous drugs, and was sentenced to three years and three months' imprisonment.

2. Having lodged a notice of application for leave to appeal against conviction and sentence, the applicant has since put in a notice abandoning his application insofar as it pertains the sentence. So we are now concerned only with conviction..

3. The dangerous drugs the subject-matter of the charge consist of 246.01 gm of a mixture containing 31.27 gm of heroin hydrochloride.

4. Through the evidence of police officers whom the judge found reliable, the prosecution established that the applicant had those drugs in his home. And prosecution also produced a written statement by him to the police saying that he was going to consume some of those drugs and sell the rest of them to other addicts.

5. The applicant went into the witness-box and said that he was indeed in possession of some dangerous drugs, about 200 gms of a mixture containing narcotic, but that the whole lot was on his own consumption, they constituting about five months' supply which he had purchased.

6. There was in his home the paraphernalia of drug trafficking. The presence of those items the applicant sought partially to explain by saying that he had been involved in drug dealing in the past, but not in relation to the present lot.

7. We say "partially" because as far as a pair of scales are concerned, he simply said that they were for checking the quantity of dangerous drugs which he purchased: in this instance for his own consumption, he says.

8. The judge had considered the case with great care, coming to an unassailable conclusion that the primary facts were exactly as the prosecution witnesses said, and that the only reasonable inference to be drawn from those facts was that this applicant was in possession of the dangerous drugs in question for the purpose of trafficking.

9. In the face of that evidence and that finding by the judge, this application has been persisted in and advanced by nothing more than a reiteration of the rejected story.

10. There is not the slightest shred of merit in this application. And the only proper fate for it is its dismissal accompanied by two months' loss of time.

11. We so order.