On the 2nd day of August 2018, at around 10.48 in the evening, the defendant was stopped by police in a private residential estate in Yuen Long. Inside a backpack he carried, the relevant drugs were found. The drugs were contained in numerous transparent resealable plastic bags.
In a subsequent video-recorded interview, the defendant admitted that he received a reward of $1,000 to help a person named Yu to repackage the drugs.
The defendant is 27 years old. He was a construction worker. He has a clear record, educated up to Form 4 level. He is divorced and with a 7-year-old daughter.
Mr Davies, counsel for the defendant, submitted three letters to this court, written by the defendant himself, his sister and his employer respectively. And according to his employer, the defendant has been a very good employee for years in his scaffolding company. Mr Davies submitted that the defendant is a good man who had made a mistake, and I agree with Mr Davies. Now, but as Mr Davies has pointed out, there are guidelines laid down by the Court of Appeal in this kind of cases and this court has only a very limited discretion to deviate from it.
Now, for trafficking in cocaine, this court should follow the guideline laid down by the Court of Appeal in the case Lau Tak Ming. For trafficking in a quantity of 10 grammes to 50 grammes of cocaine, the appropriate starting point for sentence is 5 to 8 years’ imprisonment.
Now, in the present case, the relevant quantities of cocaine involved is 38.91 grammes. Now, I accept, as I have mentioned earlier, I accept that the defendant was a good man who made a mistake, and he had been a responsible father and son who had taken care of the family. I would adopt a lenient approach in adopting a starting point of 6½ years’ imprisonment, which is within the range of sentence as laid down by the guideline. Taking into account the defendant’s guilty plea, the sentence will be reduced to 4 years and 4 months.