CRIMINAL CASE NO. 162 OF 2010
COURT: Lai Wah, you were caught trying to carry out of Hong Kong to Sydney, in Australia, nearly 1½ kilograms of methamphetamine hydrochloride, the dangerous drug that is commonly called “Ice”. You had this “Ice” concealed on your body; the packages were strapped to your legs. The weight of the “Ice” was 1,465.52 kilograms with an active content of 1,430.49 grammes.
You will be aware that the sentences for those who traffic in any way in dangerous drugs are very severe and involve very long periods of imprisonment.
The international dimension to this case differentiates it from the case where the supply of drugs is within Hong Kong. Hong Kong must not get a reputation of being a place that supplies dangerous drugs to the rest of the world. The best way of seeing that Hong Kong does not get that reputation is for the rest of the world to see that Hong Kong is a place where drug exporting is very severely punished.
I am told in this case that you were intending to join a package tour to Sydney. No doubt this was a deliberate plan carried out in the hope that this would provide you with some anonymity as part of the group. This too makes your offence the worse because it brought the whole of the group, who were no doubt innocent tourists, under suspicion. It is fortunate for them, your unsuspecting would-be fellow passengers, that they were discovered in Hong Kong and not Sydney, where they would have been brought under great suspicion and greatly inconvenienced. This international aspect of your drug trafficking must be taken into account in determining the length of your sentence.
I have been told this morning of your family circumstances and why you committed this offence. Nothing in your family circumstances, or the circumstances of your commission of this offence, affords you any mitigation. Your concern for your older sister is commendable, but the medical report put before me shows that her condition - she is severely hypotensive and has a cardiac problem - is not an unusual one for a person in her late 60s. It does not appear from the report that I have that she is under any immediate threat to her life. I have to bear in mind that many people have sick relatives, who require expensive medical care, and yet very few of those people resort to committing criminal offences to fund that medical care.
Your age, 55, is not so great that I should consider a lighter sentence in your case.
You have a bad criminal record. It includes five previous convictions for possessing dangerous drugs and two previous convictions for trafficking in dangerous drugs. I notice that your last conviction was in June of 2007 when you received a sentence of 32 months’ imprisonment for that offence. Clearly, you are not a stranger to drugs or drug trafficking and this too must be taken as a factor that aggravates your offence and it must be reflected in your sentence.
Your only mitigation lies in your plea of guilty. It is well recognised that those who are guilty and readily admit their guilt before the courts will receive a substantial discount in sentence for doing so. You are entitled to that discount and you will receive it.
Your counsel, Mr Tse, will have told you that there are guidelines for all judges as to how we should sentence those who traffic in “Ice”. They were laid down a long time ago, in 1991, in the case of a man called Ching Kwok Hung. You will also have been told that we are expected to stick to those guidelines unless there are very good reasons not to do so. In your case there are no very good reasons as to why I should not stick to those guidelines.
In following those guidelines, for the very large quantity of “Ice” in this case, had you not pleaded guilty, had you taken this case to trial and had the jury found you guilty, I would have sentenced you to 23 years' imprisonment. That is taking into account the international aspect of this case and your criminal record.
Because of your plea of guilty, I can give you a full one-third discount on that sentence. That means that your sentence for this offence is one of 15 years and 4 months' imprisonment.