CRIMINAL CASE NO. 76 OF 2012
COURT: I have to sentence you for trafficking in dangerous drugs. The drug in question was ketamine and you have pleaded guilty to trafficking in an amount approaching 6 kilogrammes.
You will have been told that drug sentencing in Hong Kong proceeds on the basis of guidelines which, in turn, depend upon the nature and quantity of the drug. The guideline for ketamine runs out at 1 kilogramme which attracts a starting point of 14 years after trial.
The Summary of Facts reveals that your role in this matter was to act as a keeper of the drugs in question. I am willing to deal with you on the basis of what you told the police and what your counsel adopts and asserts in that respect. Consequently, I will assess your role as being at the bottom end of the bracket of responsibility.
I will also add this, that I will accept what has been set out in the helpful letter I have had from your mother and I can summarise that by saying that you did not have an easy life as a young man.
Accordingly, in the spirit of you pleading guilty, I am minded to show you as much mercy as I can in the circumstances, and because you are still a young man facing a long term of imprisonment. But the discretion I have is a limited one because the facts have to be exceptional to take me substantially away from the guidelines and your facts are not exceptional.
Because the guideline runs out, as I have already said, at 1,000 grammes, I have been helped by looking at two cases which counsel has put before me. I am not going to tell you the details of the cases. If anyone wanted to know them, they just have to have a transcript of what has passed between the Bar and the Bench in the course of hearing your case.
It amounts to this, that last year, there were two similar cases before the High Court, both involving amounts in the region of 6 kilogrammes of ketamine. In one case, the judge took a starting point of 16 years; in another case, 18 years was taken. I received more help from the case before Deputy High Court Judge Longley because, in his case, he set out the reasoning why he had chosen 16 years and he had done that by comparing the cut-off point for ketamine in the tariff for that with the same for heroin, which does have guidelines for amounts in excess of 1,000 grammes.
In the circumstances of your case, if it proceeded on the basis of weight and it were a normal trafficking case, I would look at a starting point of 16 years. However, having accepted the mitigation, as I have indicated, as to what your role in the matter was, taken with the plea of guilty and with the matters of your background to which I can give a little, but not very much, weight, I am minded to take a starting point of 15 years in your case.
You know you earn a third discount for your plea of guilty. The sentence on Count 2 of the indictment is thus one of 10 years’ imprisonment. In the circumstances, even though it is a long sentence, it is probably the least sentence you could have hoped for.