HKSAR v. Lam Ka Po

HCCC 202/2016

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CRIMINAL CASE NO 202 OF 2016

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Transcript of the Audio Recording
of the Sentence in the above Case

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COURT: The defendant, who is now aged 43, has been very sensibly advised and has decided to plead guilty to this count of conspiracy. This means that despite the fact that this is at the very last moment before arraignment, he is, as the law presently stands, able to claim a full discount on the sentence he would have received after a contested trial.

The defendant was responsible for running a bar with the assistance of others in Nanking Street, Yau Ma Tei, known as the Go Go Bar. He used the bar, however, to supply not only the alcohol his customers wanted, but also cocaine. The evidence on Counts 2 to 5 which have now been left on the file was completely overwhelming, as the defendant recognised himself. The reason for this is that he had been the subject of police surveillance inside his bar for three consecutive days, resulting in his arrest on 28 August last year. The conspiracy charge includes the evidence on those Counts 2 to 5.

Following his arrest, the defendant confessed, in full, his guilt to those individual charges of trafficking and also what amounts to the evidence on Count 1, which until yesterday the defendant seemed to be denying. Count 1 is entirely based on the detailed confession to the police of his involvement in trafficking with a man called “Ah Tat” or he knew as “Ah Tat”. The conspiracy was spread between April to August of last year.

In essence, what the defendant told the police was this. That he had turned to trafficking in cocaine after having become addicted to gambling and had run into considerable debt and so it was that he sold dangerous drugs as a means of earning enough money to repay his debts. It was following an introduction to the person known as Ah Tat that he was supplied, normally at night, with a box of 50 pellets every two or three days. Those pellets would be placed inside a packet of some kind into a space in the ceiling where they would be hidden from other people. Apparently, usually Ah Tat would arrange for someone to deliver and then for someone else to collect money later for the drugs that had been delivered.

The defendant described 50 pellets as a “half a piece”, costing $13,000 and he would usually sell, as is borne out by the surveillance later by the police, each pellet for $450. And from the figures that were supplied by the defendant, it is apparent that at $13,000 for 50 pellets, the wholesale price of each pellet would cost him $260. So that if he was selling it for $450, his profit on each pellet was about $190. The defendant was telling the police that he was making a $100 profit on the supply of each pellet. But if that was so, he would be paying $350 for each pellet to the supplier of the pellets to him and that would mean a figure of $17,500 rather than $13,000 for 50 pellets. However the calculation is made, it is claimed that the weekly sums involved were considerable.

Based on the valuation report of Detective Senior Inspector Chan Lap-kuen(?) in regard to cocaine, the street value at the material time was $1,023 a gramme.

The cocaine referred to in Counts 2, 3, 4 and 5 which have been left on the file represent a total, in terms of value, of just under $20,000 worth. I should say that I ignore for all purposes the small quantity of cannabis that was also found in the premises, and as I indicated to Miss Ma during her mitigation speech, I ignore also the previous convictions of the defendant.

But those drugs which undoubtedly had been on the premises in the three days leading up to the arrest of the defendant, in round terms amount to 17 grammes of cocaine and would alone have attracted a sentence after trial of about 5½ years’ imprisonment.

Now, it is complained that the conspiracy extending over four or five months is by far the most serious aspect to this case. The starting date in April is unknown and I propose to adopt, as I think both counsel in this case also did, a period which is safer, namely four months as the period of the conspiracy. Taking the chemist’s analysis of 50 pellets weighing just over 10 grammes, repeated about twice a week for approximately 4 weeks in a month, this would amount to 80 grammes a month for four months at least and that equates to 320 grammes being trafficked for the period of the conspiracy.

Now, on that basis alone, a sentence after trial would be in the order of 14 years’ imprisonment and it goes without saying that the drugs referred to in the counts which have been left on the file are included in that calculation. They were only included on the indictment because of the possibility that a jury might say that a conspiracy had not been proved with some other person.

Now, the principal mitigation for the defendant, aside from his plea of guilty which is most important, is that he has made to the police a completely clean breast of his involvement in cocaine trafficking. In a second interview with the police, he did not provide any further information about others who might be engaged in the trade so that the full extent of the defendant’s mitigation is his plea and the way in which he confessed to a conspiracy which, but for his own confession, it would not have been possible to charge the defendant with. He could simply have refused to answer any questions which would have been quite within his rights. That is why making such a full confession is an important mitigating factor in this particular case.

With this in mind, the sentence to be imposed on Count 1 depends very much on the calculation based upon the defendant’s own confession. I am inclined, therefore, as a further expression of leniency to err on the side of caution and to take a period of 16 weeks in which a minimum of 10 grammes of cocaine was supplied to his customers each week.

Although Miss Ma quite understandably and correctly came to a calculation of 260 grammes during the period of the conspiracy, I propose to adopt a starting point for 160 grammes under the guidelines of sentence for this kind of drug. If the defendant had been convicted after a trial, the sentence for that quantity of cocaine would be 10½ years’ imprisonment. As it is, there is a plea of guilty so he has earned a full discount of one-third.

If you had pleaded not guilty and been found guilty after a trial, it is quite possible that you would have received a sentence of between 10½ to 11 years’ imprisonment or even higher. As it is, your sentence on Count 1 is 7 years’ imprisonment.