COURT: Defendant, you have been committed to this court for sentence having pleaded guilty to two charges of trafficking in a dangerous drug in the court below.
The particulars of the 1st charge are that on 25 January of this year, at the public toilet at Lam Tei Light Rail Train Station, you trafficked in 0.40 of a kilogramme of ketamine, and those of the 2nd charge are that, on the same day, at your premises at the 1st Floor, Block C, Grand Villa, No 105 Tsz Tin Tsuen, Lam Tei, you trafficked in 0.59 of a kilogramme of ketamine.
The Summary of Facts, which you have agreed, quite simply speak for themselves. You were intercepted at the LRT Station at Lam Tei and the drugs being the subject matter of the 1st charge were discovered from your shoulder bag. You were taken back to your premises where, from your bedroom, the drugs being the subject matter of the 2nd charge were found.
You, up until the commission of these two offences, had a clear criminal record and everything appeared to be going reasonably well for you. Whether you were affected by your parents’ earlier separation and divorce, or whether you fell into association with undesirable peers leading up to your committing these offences, is unclear. But nonetheless, you have nobody to blame other than yourself for the commission of these offences.
The only real mitigation here is your plea of guilty and I will give you due credit for that. I also accept that whilst there are two separate offences here, they are both part and parcel of the same transaction, so to speak, and I will tailor my sentences to reflect the total amount of drugs involved in both offences.
The guidelines for sentencing in offences relating to trafficking in ketamine are contained in Secretary for Justice v Hii Siew Cheng and for trafficking in quantities of narcotic between 300 to 600 grammes, the sentencing range, after trial, falls between 9 to 12 years’ imprisonment.
Whilst the amounts of ketamine in each individual charge fall within this range, the total amount of ketamine involved is just short of 1 kilogramme. The sentencing range for trafficking in that amount, after trial, ranges between 12 to 14 years’ imprisonment.
Accordingly, on Charge 1, I adopt a starting point of 10 years’ imprisonment. I will reduce this by one-third to take account of your plea of guilty, coming to 6 years and 8 months’ imprisonment on Charge 1. On Charge 2, I adopt a starting point of 11½ years’ imprisonment. Once again, due to your plea of guilty, this will be reduced by one-third, coming to 7 years and 8 months’ imprisonment on Charge 2.
Due to the question of totality of sentence and to reflect the overall criminality involved, I order that 2 years and 4 months of the sentence on Charge 2 is to run consecutively to the sentence on Charge 1, the balance concurrently, arriving at an overall sentence of 9 years’ imprisonment.