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HCCC200/2009
IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE
HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION
COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE
CRIMINAL CASE NO. 200 OF 2009
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HKSAR |
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CHAN KA MING (A1) |
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NG KWUN TUNG (A2) |
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| Date: |
30 July 2009 at 9.40 am |
| Present: |
Ms Laura Ng, SPP of the Department of Justice, for HKSAR
Mr Jasper Kwan, instructed by Ellen Au & Co, for the 1st and 2nd Accused |
| Offence: |
(1) & (2) Trafficking in a dangerous drug (販運危險藥物) |
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Transcript of the Audio Recording
of the Sentence in the above Case
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COURT: 1st accused, you pleaded guilty to a single charge of trafficking in 242.28 grammes of ketamine.
2nd accused, you pleaded guilty to a similar charge involving 233.25 grammes of ketamine.
The facts are very simple. The police received information concerning drug trafficking. They mounted an operation. The two of you arrived shortly after midnight on the morning of 10 January this year outside or in the vicinity of Lam Tei in Tuen Mun, where the police were waiting. They stopped you. You were searched, and the two respective quantities of ketamine were found on you.
After you were cautioned, each of you individually admitted that you were selling the drugs.
You live together in a flat. The flat was searched, and quite a large number of resealable transparent plastic bags, as well as an electronic scale, were located.
You were each subsequently interviewed under caution, and you each admitted to having purchased the ketamine, repackaged it, and intended to resell it for a profit.
You each said in the course of your interview, and it is repeated in your antecedent statements which are before me, that each of you is addicted to ketamine. That is a drug which is of huge concern to the Hong Kong community at the moment, and despite the fact that you have personal experience of the addictive nature of that drug, the harm it has caused to each of you, the way that you are wasting your lives on this drug, and the stress that it is bound to have caused your families; despite all those issues, you are quite prepared to spread that misery throughout the community for the sake of some small, quick profit.
Your counsel asks me to be merciful to you, but you were not merciful to the people to whom you were selling these drugs.
The Court of Appeal has recently reconsidered the tariff for ketamine sentences. The quantities that each of you had for trafficking purposes fall within the fourth band, with a range of sentence starting point after trial of between 6 and 9 years’ imprisonment.
The appropriate starting point for each of you is 8 years’ imprisonment. As mechanical and arithmetical as drug sentencing has become these days, I see no distinction to be drawn because one of you had 9 grammes less than the other, nor do I think that the 1st accused’s previous convictions justify a higher starting point.
The only mitigation there is is your plea of guilty. That reduces the sentence to 5 years and 4 months’ imprisonment. That is the period each of you is to serve.
v You have in fact received the benefit of a very generous decision to charge you individually. You should, in my view, have been charged either with jointly trafficking in the total quantity of drugs, or with conspiracy to do so. That would have resulted in a sentence some 2 years higher than you got, which would have been thoroughly deserved. There is nothing I can do about that.
You are to serve 5 years and 4 months.
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