COURT: Stand up, please. I have to sentence you for trafficking in a dangerous drug. The drug in your case was heroin. You swallowed 83 pellets containing 600 grammes of heroin in powder of greater amount. You were stopped at our airport, having flown here from Qatar.
You would have been told that sentencing here depends upon guidelines, and the guidelines are dependent upon the nature and quantity of the drug. You fall at the top of the category that runs from 400 grammes to 600 grammes, attracting a starting point of imprisonment after trial of 15 to 20 years. It is also the case that I am bound to increase that sentence somewhat because of the international element of carrying the drugs across international borders.
You will appreciate that the discretion I have is limited, but I can look to your role in this matter and I will accept, because it sounds eminently reasonable to me and it fits a pattern that this court is particularly familiar with, the submissions made by your counsel, namely, that you were recruited in Africa to do this by a Nigerian, that you had no criminal background, you had not been here before, and that you fell prey to the temptation he held out to you, you living in difficult financial circumstances back home with plenty of people to support with their own personal problems.
If I did this entirely mathematically, I would have to take a 20‑year starting point and I would have to enhance it by a year for the international element and that would give a starting point of 21 years which would give a sentence of 14 years. I am going to sentence you to less than that. I cannot make it radically different because I cannot step out of the basic way we sentence people here, but I can give weight to your role in this matter, and the sentences are big enough for the adjustment for that role to be of some significance.
What I am going to do in effect is I am going to take a starting point globally of 19 and a half years. That includes the enhancement for the international element. In other words, I have given you in terms of certainly the way we sentence in Hong Kong a discount for being the courier. The result is from 19 and a half years’ starting point 13 years’ imprisonment.
And whilst I have not repeated all that Miss Crebbin told me because if anyone wanted to know they could just look at the transcript of it, I accept the thrust of her mitigation, and I have also taken into account what you told me in the letter that you wrote to me. In the circumstances, the sentence of 13 years is the least I suspect you could hope for. And let me just repeat this. It is one that deliberately is less than the mathematical formula because I give you what weight I can to your role as a courier.