CRIMINAL CASE NO. 47 OF 2011
COURT: The defendant pleaded guilty in Eastern Magistracy to trafficking in 103.22 grammes of “Ice”, and has been committed to this court for sentence.
The facts of the case were relatively straightforward. At 3.19 am on 21 October 2010, the defendant was seen by a police patrol in Prince Edward Road. He was stopped and searched, and in a waist bag were found the drugs the subject of the charge.
When he was arrested and cautioned, he claimed the drugs were “for his own consumption and for sharing with friends”.
The retail value of the drugs if sold on the street was $76,937.
His premises were nearby, and when they were searched, nothing of relevance to the charge was found. Subsequently, in a video-recorded interview, the defendant said he had paid for the drugs with his winnings from his betting on horse races, and had paid $30,000 for them, presumably getting a bulk discount, when he had purchased them in a park from, he said, someone he did not know.
He also told the police so far as his own consumption was concerned that he habitually consumed 3 grammes per day. That required a daily expenditure by him of $1,000 to $2,000. He also said so far as his providing drugs to his friends was concerned that he intended to sell the drugs to them at cost; that is, at $400 per gramme. The defendant finally said that his monthly salary was $10,000 or more on average per month.
His story in this regard simply does not make sense. There are coincidences it relies upon. His winning of money on a horse race and his finding someone in a park with that amount of drugs for sale, which I understood from the photographs provided to me in the sentencing bundle were in a single bag, is simply too much to accept inasmuch as it requires me to believe that he was able to use his winnings to purchase these drugs from a stranger that he did not know and whom he had come across in a park.
Nevertheless, he says in mitigation part of the drugs were for his own consumption. As I say, he suggested to the police in his video-recorded interview that he consumed $1,000 to $2,000 worth of drugs, and I quote, “per day”. Before me it was advanced on his behalf that by that, he had not meant he consumed drugs every day, but that when he did, it was of that amount.
No weight can be placed on that assertion. I think it is quite clear he was referring to his daily input. It is also clear that what he said in that regard conflicts substantially with what he says he earned on a monthly basis. I bear in mind that the drugs were carried by the defendant in a public place in the early hours of the morning, and that also is an indication of trafficking rather than consumption. Accordingly, I place no weight on what he said to the police.
It is true, however, that the defendant has a history of convictions for simple possession, though recently his drug convictions have been for trafficking.
In my view, the defendant’s story is fairly typical. His history shows he is an addict who turned eventually to trafficking, and like many such individuals, perhaps used a small part of the drugs he intended to traffic for his own consumption. I might add whether he was selling the balance of the drugs to his friends or other people, or whether it was at cost or at a profit, is irrelevant; that remains trafficking.
In my judgment, therefore, very little of what the defendant had in the bag was for his own consumption, and in the circumstances, the latent risk of even that amount getting into the hands of others was very high. I do not therefore think there is any substantial mitigation in this aspect of the case at all.
Accordingly, I take a starting point of 10 years’ imprisonment. The only mitigation of substance which remains to the defendant is his plea of guilty. That he gets full credit for, and his plea reduces his sentence to one of 6 years 8 months’ imprisonment.
The defendant is currently serving a sentence of 4 months’ imprisonment imposed in March of this year for an assault. That offence was upon another inmate while the defendant was in custody at Lai Chi Kok awaiting his sentencing in this case.
I take into account the totality of sentence, and order that 1 month of the present sentence be served concurrently with the sentence imposed in respect of the assault, and that the balance of the present sentence be served consecutively to the assault sentence.