CRIMINAL CASE NO. 118 OF 2011
The Admitted Facts show that the defendant was seen in a street in Mong Kok on the evening of 17 November last year. He was intercepted by the police, and in his right front pocket of his jeans were found nine transparent resealable plastic bags containing the ketamine.
Under caution he admitted that he was delivering the ketamine in order to earn money.
The estimated retail value of the drugs is in the region of HK$28,821.
In a video-recorded interview, the defendant said that he was instructed to take the ketamine home and await for further instructions, and he was to be paid $500.
The defendant is now 20 years old, and was 19 years old at the time of the arrest. He has had four previous convictions, nothing similar. His last offence was in 2008 for criminal damage, when he was given probation, so this is the first time that he will be in prison.
In mitigation I am told that he is not educated very highly; he left school after Form 2. According to the letters from his father and his grandmother, it would appear that the defendant had suffered an emotional breakdown in 2010 when his girlfriend left him. He suffered from depression and even attempted suicide.
It is of great comfort, I think, to his family, the people who love him, that he has decided, as Mr Collins said, to study during the time when he is in prison. Many people like the defendant come through these courts, and if they do not decide to put a brake on their criminal activities, he will still be standing behind bars when he is 80 years old. So now is your chance, defendant, to really make something of yourself.
As has been correctly pointed out, for trafficking in ketamine, guidelines have been laid down for trafficking in ketamine in the case of Secretary for Justice v Hii Siew Cheng [2009] 1 HKLRD at page 1.
Mr Collins has correctly identified that the level of sentencing for 50 to 300 grammes of trafficking in ketamine is set at between 6 to 9 years’ imprisonment. The amount that the defendant has been charged with is 164.85 grammes, which would merit a sentence of between 7 to 8 years’ starting point.
Taking into account everything that has been said on his behalf, including the fact that there is a sense of remorse, because upon being arrested, the defendant had admitted everything to the police, I am prepared to take as a starting point 7 years, and because of the plea of guilty, the defendant is entitled to one-third off.
So the sentence is therefore reduced to 4 years and 8 months.