HKSAR v. Lee Sek Ho
Read the full judgment text of HCCC 194/2018 on BabelCite. This High Court CFI judgment was delivered on 2 November 2018.
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HCCC 194/2018 [2018] HKCFI 2852 IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE CRIMINAL CASE NO 194 OF 2018 -----------------
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--------------------------------------------- Transcript of the Audio Recording --------------------------------------------- COURT: Lee Sek-ho, I am not going to preach a sermon about the dangers of drug trafficking and the dangerous drugs trade. You, clearly, willingly lent your aid to this filthy trade. You will have been told by your counsel, Mr Lee, that there are strict guidelines all judges have to follow when it comes to sentencing people who traffic in dangerous drugs and Mr Lee would have told you that we are expected to keep to those guidelines unless there are very strong reasons not to. There were no such strong reasons in your case. You do, however, have a very powerful mitigation. You readily admitted your wrongdoing and cooperated with the police when arrested and you pleaded guilty at the earliest possible stage in the Magistrate's Court, and you are entitled to a substantial discount in sentence for that mitigation. I am not going to increase your sentence because you have a criminal record. It is not one which I regard as a particularly serious one. I am pleased to hear from Mr Lee that you are taking advantage of the educational opportunities the Correctional Services Department offer. Given that the amount of drugs that is involved in this case, I think it is 232 grammes, rounded up or rounded down. After trial, that means had you been found guilty by a jury after pleading not guilty, you would have been looking at a sentence of 12 years' imprisonment. Because of your plea of guilty, I am permitted to reduce that by one-third, which means that your sentence of imprisonment is going to be one of 8 years' imprisonment. |