CRIMINAL CASE NO. 259 OF 2011
COURT: Lo Ka-fu, you have been committed to this court for sentence following your plea of guilty in the Magistrates’ Court to trafficking in 999.0 grammes of a powder containing 831.1 grammes of ketamine.
On the morning of 10 December last year, police officers saw you get off a light goods vehicle and then wait at a taxi stand outside Sun Fong House in Sun Chui Estate, Shatin. They approached you and searched you, and found that you had a plastic bag, the contents of which were subsequently analysed and found to be ketamine, in your jacket pocket.
The police then searched the vehicle from which you had alighted, and found three further plastic bags which, on analysis, were found also to contain ketamine, in a storage compartment behind the front passenger seat.
The four bags contained the large quantity of drugs referred to in the charge. Some idea of the quantity involved can be gleaned from the fact that if they had been sold on the streets of Hong Kong at that time, they would have had a retail value of more than $123,000.
You told the police that you were delivering the drugs for a man you had met three days previously in a bar. Acting on his instructions, you had collected the four bags of ketamine from a flower bed near a bus stop in Sheung Shui. The man had then called you on the phone and told you to deliver one of the bags to someone at the taxi stand in Sun Chui Estate. He told you that you were to await instructions as to what to do with the remaining three bags. He had promised you HK$400 for each bag of drugs that you delivered.
You told the police, and this is something that Mr Iu has also repeated today, that you had agreed to traffick in these drugs to make money to support your family.
You were, however, a mature man of 38 years of age. You would have been very well aware that very serious consequences would follow if you were caught trafficking in this quantity of drugs, yet you decided to take that risk.
I know Mr Iu has told you that the normal guidelines’ starting point for those who traffick in between 600 grammes and 1 kilogram of ketamine is between 12 to 14 years’ imprisonment.
In your case, 831.1 grammes of ketamine were involved. I see no reason to depart from those guidelines, and accordingly, I adopt a starting point of 13 years’ imprisonment.
I have listened carefully to all that Mr Iu has said on your behalf. I bear in mind that this is your first drug‑related conviction, and that you have never before been sentenced to a term of imprisonment. I also bear in mind that for the last 10 years you have been leading a law-abiding life. It is tragic that you should have yielded to temptation on this occasion and committed this offence. It is particularly tragic when you have a young daughter and such a supportive family and friends, whose letters to the court I have read.
When it comes to an offence as serious as that of trafficking in dangerous drugs, these are matters to which the court can only give very limited weight. The only substantial mitigation in your case is your remorse which you have shown by pleading guilty, and for that you are entitled to the usual discount.
I sentence you to 8½ years’ imprisonment.