COURT: The defendant was found guilty by a jury of conspiracy to manufacture a dangerous drug, namely, cocaine. The facts are that the defendant had rented a room or a hotel suite in a hotel for five days. The suite contained two bedrooms and an open plan kitchen. The evidence which the jury obviously accepted was that she was taught by her co-conspirator, a person called Jackie, to manufacture the cocaine which she detailed in her video-recorded interview.
When the police searched the hotel suite, they found about 74.8 grammes of actual cocaine narcotic in the room. There were traces of the cocaine in the lid of a pot which was on top of the stove. There were beakers found and according to the defendant’s video-recorded interview, she was taught by Jackie to first boil the cocaine, the base, and then add baking soda which was also found in the hotel suite into the mixture to make the crack cocaine and the resultant mixture she said in her video-recorded interview half of that was subsequently taken to give to somebody who was a friend of Jackie, her co-conspirator.
According to the defendant’s video-recorded interview she said that this Jackie was merely a customer she had met in the course of her work and this Jackie had promised her a reward if she would help him do this.
The prosecution’s expert who was called, Mr Ho, the chemist, confirmed that what was said by the defendant in the video-recorded interview was the way in order to make the crack cocaine. It is a very simple operation. It takes a matter of minutes to do.
Now, on the basis of what the police had found this is indeed what I would term a small-scale operation. The defendant in her video-recorded interview said that was the only time she manufactured the dangerous drug in the room. There is no evidence to contradict that this was her only time to manufacture in that room and obviously as far as the facts are concerned the equipment that was found were very simple. There were no equipment like sealing machines or hot press machines, etc. So therefore I would consider it a small-scale operation and also of a limited time as the hotel room was only rented for five days.
I accept Mr Boyton’s submission that probably the total amount of mixture that was processed by the defendant as described by her would mean before she distributed it to Jackie’s friend would be in the region of about 150 grammes of cocaine narcotic.
As Mr Boyton correctly pointed out, according to the drug trafficking recommendation guidelines in Abdallah, that would equate to about 8 to 12 years’ imprisonment after trial. Of course, manufacturing is much more serious than trafficking in dangerous drugs. So therefore it would automatically attract a higher sentence than sentences for trafficking.
As in the case that Mr Boyton submitted, the Court of Appeal in R v Cheung Wai Kwong [1997] HKLRD 344, did say that when considering the sentence for manufacturing of a dangerous drug, apart from the quantity other factors should include the scale of the operation, the capacity of equipment and whether the manufacturing station had been producing or is likely to produce substantial quantities of dangerous drugs and the role played by the accused.
In the case of HKSAR v Wong Ping Kay in 2002, the Court of Appeal was considering a charge of manufacturing of heroin hydrochloride in a flat in Hong Kong and the appellant had pleaded guilty in that case. And in that case the appellant was manufacturing heroin hydrochloride by blending caffeine into the heroin base and then packaging it into plastic straws for sale and it was inside a flat which had been rented by the appellant for about three months prior to his arrest.
The Court of Appeal accepted that it was a one-man operation and was of the view that although the element of manufacturing was an aggravating feature, it still amounted to a comparatively small role for a manufacturer and they then reduced the starting point sentence to one of 10 years’ imprisonment from 12 years.
Worth noting also is the recent case of HKSAR v Cheng Kwok Cheung and Others where Mr Justice Wong in 2018, this is 2018, where again for manufacturing of dangerous drugs in what was termed as the lower end of a medium-size operation where police officers found inside the flat apart from the normal plastic bag, etc, it was set up as a manufacturing place not only with heat seal machine, they also had a vacuum packing machine and all the paraphernalia set up for drug manufacturing in a flat.
The amount of narcotic found in the flat was in the region of 200 grammes of cocaine. There were all together three appellants in that case and the tenant was sentenced to 16½ years starting point and the lookout was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment as a starting point and the one who had the direct role in the manufacturing operation was sentenced to 18 years as a starting point.
Now, in this case, as I have said, the facts show that this is a small-scale operation in a temporary accommodation. The facts show it is hardly as sophisticated as the one in Cheng Kwok Cheung’s case above. Although the defendant has had previous convictions to do with dangerous drugs, they were in the region of mostly possession of dangerous drugs and for which she was sent to a drug addiction treatment centre. So this is her first serious offence.
So taking everything into account, I consider that an appropriate sentence would be 12 years’ imprisonment. So the defendant go to prison for 12 years.