COURT: I don’t propose to keep you in suspense. You are going to prison for 15 years and 4 months. When I’ve left court, your lawyers will explain to you when you are likely to be released, bearing in mind the rules we have about remission of sentence, and the length of time you’ve been in custody.
What the police found in the room you rented, together with what you told the police when you were interviewed, goes some way towards revealing your true role in this enterprise to get ice and ketamine onto the streets of Hong Kong.
Your role was something more than that of a storekeeper. You had an oven to remove moisture from the drugs. You had sieves to filter out any dirt. You had scales to weigh the drugs into saleable quantities. You had a sealing machine to seal the bags into which the drugs were to be packed. And you had other paraphernalia as well, including scissors and a cutter.
It is not possible to say whether you were something more than a mere packer, and I therefore give you the benefit of
the doubt that your role was limited to that. And since the prosecution accepts that there is no evidence that you were running your own cottage industry from your room, I propose to treat you as someone who was working for others, and as someone who was no more than a minor cog in the distribution chain by which the ice and ketamine were to get onto the streets.
In addition to the ice and the ketamine, the police also found in your room 300 cartridges of cannabis oil. You told the police that you allowed your room to be used for storing them. There is nothing to contradict that assertion, and it is consistent with how the summary of facts describes the way they were packaged.
You will have been told that the Court of Appeal has laid down guidelines for the appropriate sentence for people who traffic in drugs. The guidelines are based on the weight of the narcotic content of the drugs involved. The weight of the narcotic content of the ice in your room was about 2,800 grammes. The weight of the narcotic content of the ketamine which you had on you when you were arrested and which the police found in your room was about 2,670 grammes. And the weight of the narcotic content of the cannabis oil was about 693 grammes.
I acknowledge that had you been arrested a week earlier or a week later, the quantities of the ice, the ketamine and the cannabis oil you would then have had may have been less. It was therefore a matter of chance that on the day of your arrest there happened to be these quantities on you and in your room. But the quantities you had on you and in your room that day is the only basis on which the court can sentence you.
The most recent sentencing guideline for ice says that for someone who is convicted of trafficking in 1,500 to 5,000 grammes of ice, the appropriate range of sentence is 20 to 24 years’ imprisonment. For ketamine, the range for any quantity over 1,000 grammes is at least 14 years’ imprisonment.
I have not been told of any sentencing guideline for cannabis oil, and both Mr Kong and Mr Wong say that I should use the sentencing guideline for cannabis and cannabis resin. There, the range for any quantity below 2,000 grammes is up to 16 months’ imprisonment.
These are the appropriate ranges for someone who has been convicted after pleading not guilty.
It would not be fair if I simply took the appropriate sentence for each of the drugs and then aggregated them.
The fairer and more realistic approach is to take the longest sentence which would have been passed for the drugs you were trafficking in if you had been sentenced just for that - in this case the ice - and then to take into account the fact that you were trafficking in ketamine and cannabis oil as well.
I ignore for present purposes the cocaine which was found in your room, the narcotic content of which was less than half a gramme, as that would add hardly anything to the overall sentence.
The guidelines to which I have referred were set for defendants who were involved in trafficking at the lowest level of culpability, namely, as a courier or a storekeeper - the role you played in respect of the cannabis oil.
The Court of Appeal has recently identified the hierarchy of roles of those who traffic in dangerous drugs. As I have said, when it comes to the ice and the ketamine, your role was marginally more than that. Had I been sentencing you for the ice alone, I would have taken 21 years’ imprisonment as my starting point.
Had I been sentencing you for the ketamine alone, I would have taken 15 years’ imprisonment as my starting point. And had I been sentencing you for the cannabis oil alone, I would have taken 10 months’ imprisonment as my starting point.
I bear in mind that the Court of Appeal has said that trafficking in a variety of drugs is an aggravating factor, but at the same time I must be careful not to sentence you twice over for the same thing. I also bear in mind the principle of totality, which requires me to stand back and check that the overall sentence is not disproportionate to your offending.
In the light of all these factors, I propose to take 23 years’ imprisonment as my overall starting point. In doing so, I have borne in mind what the Court of Appeal has said about the various tests - the absurdity test, the conversion test and the ratio test - to check whether the overall starting point which the court has in mind in cases where the offender has been convicted of trafficking in more than one drug is broadly correct.
As for the mitigating factors, I have read the letters which you, your girlfriend and your former wife have written to me, and I am prepared to accept that you realise that you took a wrong turn in life and that you are determined to turn your life around.
I also note that you have no previous convictions, and that you were anxious to exonerate the occupants of the other bedroom in your room. But the courts have said that these things count for little in cases of this kind.
Having said that, you are entitled, of course, to have your sentence reduced by one-third because you intimated to the Magistracy before the date on which you actually pleaded guilty your intention to plead guilty. That means that the overall sentence I propose to pass on you is one of 15 years’ and 4 months’ imprisonment.
I need to identify the sentences on each charge. On charge 1 (which relates to the ketamine found on you) the sentence is 4 years’ imprisonment. On charge 2 (which relates to all the drugs found in your room) the sentence is 15 years’ and 4 months’ imprisonment. Both those sentences will be served concurrently with each other, making 15 years’ and 4 months’ imprisonment in all.