HKSAR v. CEBEKHULU LINDIWE

HCCC409/2009

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CRIMINAL CASE NO. 409 OF 2009

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Transcript of the Audio Recording
of the Sentence in the above Case

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COURT:  I have to sentence you for trafficking in dangerous drugs.  I know that it will have been explained to you that our sentences here are based upon guidelines.  Those guidelines are based upon the nature of the drug and upon the quantity. 

     Your drug was heroin.  You had swallowed 59 pellets of it and the total amount you actually carried of mixture was 580 grammes, of which 430 grammes was heroin.  390 grammes was in one form, 40 grammes was in another, but both forms are heroin.  It is that 430 grammes that puts you in the category under the guidelines of 400 to 600 grammes, attracting a starting point for sentence, after trial, of 15 to 20 years.

     I will accept that you were a courier in this matter, not an organiser, and I will put you, initially, at the very bottom of that bracket and look at a starting point of 15 years.  There is an aggravation in your case, in that you were bringing the drugs across an international border and I shall have to give some weight to that.

     So if a starting point of 16 years were taken, after the one-third discount for your plea, that would produce a sentence of 10 years and 8 months.  These matters are not all entirely mathematical and I shall round it down to a sentence of 10½ years.

     You have heard me say to your counsel that it is difficult for me to tell exactly what occurred in Nepal, how much pressure you were put under by the man ‘Kennedy’.  But let us presume in your favour that it is as your counsel has indicated to me.  I regret to say that that cannot help you to any significant extent because you had the choice at the airport. 

     If you had not have wanted to carry drugs, thinking you had only gone there to carry diamonds, the remedy lay in your hands to go to the authorities at the airport and say, “I wasn’t recruited for this, I don’t want any part of it,” and you could have stopped the importation of a significant amount of heroin at that stage. 

     You chose not to.  You chose to go on with the criminal enterprise.  In those circumstances, obviously, the guidelines are going to have their usual application because it is a very common situation these courts face.

     Accordingly, the sentence I pass upon you is one of 10½ years’ imprisonment.