COURT: The 32-year-old female defendant was committed for sentence in this court from Eastern Magistracy on 2 January of this year on a single charge of trafficking in 103.9 grammes of cocaine.
The facts are straightforward. The defendant was seen alighting from a taxi in Shatin by police. She was observed carrying a tissue paper in which was wrapped certain items.
She was intercepted, and the contents of the tissue paper she was holding were found to be two packets of cocaine. In her handbag was found, in a box, three further packets of cocaine.
The drugs found, in aggregate, amounted to the 103.9 grammes of cocaine which is the subject of the charge.
I take the starting point of sentence to be 10 years’ imprisonment.
In her mitigation submissions, Ms Lau urged upon me that the defendant had been promised as a reward one of the five bags of cocaine found in her possession for her own consumption. In support of that submission Ms Lau relied upon a urine test result obtained from the defendant three days after her arrest on 28 March 2017 which detected cocaine. No other evidence was relied upon, the defendant not giving evidence and with no previous drug offences to her name.
I entirely reject that submission. One bag of the seized drugs on average would have contained drugs with a street value of over $20,000. It is a wholly unbelievable suggestion that the defendant may have been given that amount of cocaine as a reward for taking the bags in a taxi from Ma On Shan to their destination in Mong Kok and then perhaps onward to another destination in Hong Kong.
In my view, that entirely disposes of this aspect of the defendant’s mitigation, and I place no credence on any amount of the dangerous drugs in her possession being for her own consumption.
Ms Lau also relies on the fact that the defendant still suffers a degree of depression following on from post-natal depression some three years ago, but it is not relied upon as mitigation in any sense other than assisting in the explanation of the background circumstances as to why the defendant committed this offence.
Accordingly, the only substantial mitigation available to the defendant is her early plea of guilty. For that, she receives the full one-third discount.
That results in her final sentence of 6 years 8 months’ imprisonment.