CRIMINAL CASE NO. 201 OF 2012
COURT: I have to sentence you for trafficking in dangerous drugs. The drug in question was ketamine.
You were caught carrying 2.74 kilogrammes of it, and back at your home there was a further 2.73 kilogrammes.
You will have been told already that sentencing for drug offences in Hong Kong proceeds on the basis of guidelines which are based on the nature and the quantity of the drug. The guideline for ketamine runs out at 600 grammes to 1,000 grammes, which attracts a bracket of 12 to 14 years or beyond that.
By reference to other cases, one in the Court of Appeal we have looked at, which was CACC474/2009, it seems to me on the basis of the weight of the drug, the right starting point would be one of 16 years’ imprisonment.
You know that you will earn a one-third discount by reason of your plea of guilty.
That would give a sentence of 10 years and 8 months in all based on the total amount of drugs.
You will appreciate that one of the reasons guidelines are used is that the justice between people who commit the same crime should be seen to be certainly roughly evenhanded. To go outside the guidelines needs an exceptional reason. No exceptional reason exists in your case.
However, the sentencing process is not one that is entirely mathematical; it can take into account, but not give too much weight to, some factors of mitigation, and what your counsel points to in the mitigation he advances are these matters: that you are only 19, and you have never been in trouble before; that your background was not the easiest, and those matters are set out in the letters I have read; that you are genuinely remorseful, having made full admissions to the police in the video-recorded interview and having made pleas of guilty at the first available opportunity in the Magistrates’ Court; and finally, that your role in the manner was a subservient one. I note, without saying any more, the difference in age between you and the man who was arrested in your company.
At 19, I have absolutely no doubt that you were not able to finance dealing with drugs of this quantity with a value of approaching $1,838,000.
So I will give what weight I can to those matters, and looking at it in the round, what I propose to do is I shall reduce that 10 years and 8 months to 10 years, and I will add that the 16-year starting points were, of the cases that I have looked at and the ones that have been mentioned between Bench and Bar in the course of the mitigation, for weights slightly in excess of the weight in your case.
Accordingly, what I shall do is pass the least sentence I can in the circumstances consistent with honouring the spirit of the guidelines.
The sentence is one of 10 years, and I shall pass that sentence on each of these counts concurrently.