COURT: I do not propose to keep you in suspense. You are going to prison for 13 years and 8 months. When I have left court, Mr Leung will explain to you when you are likely to be released, bearing in mind the rules we have about remission of sentence, and the length of time you have been in custody.
Leaving aside the ice, the drugs found in your flat consisted of heroin and cocaine. Those were the drugs you have admitted trafficking in. The paraphernalia in your flat suggests that you were more than a storekeeper, simply looking after them before they were delivered to the next link in the chain of distribution by which they were ultimately to get to the end user. Indeed, you have admitted that your role was to purchase the drugs in bulk, break them down, package them and then deliver them down the chain of command. That is the factual basis on which you are to be sentenced.
The ice, on the other hand, comes into a different category. You have only been charged with possession of the ice found on you at the time of your arrest and in your flat, not trafficking in it. That is because the prosecution have not challenged your claim that the ice was for your own consumption. The total weight of the ice was just over 18 grammes. That is not an insignificant amount. It had a street value of over $10,000. But your possession of the ice for your own use is far less serious than the offence of trafficking in the heroin and the cocaine. The street value of the heroin was just over $625,000, and the street value of the cocaine was just over $160,000.
You will have been told that the Court of Appeal has laid down guidelines for the appropriate sentence for people who traffic in dangerous drugs. As you know, the guidelines are based on the amount of drugs involved, but the court does not look at their weight as a whole. The court focuses on the narcotic content of the drugs. The weight of the narcotic content of the drugs in your case was about 518 grammes of heroin and about 111 grammes of cocaine. I acknowledge that had you been arrested a week earlier or a week later, the quantities of the drugs you would then have had may have been less. It was therefore a matter of chance that on this particular occasion, you happened to have in your flat these quantities of drugs. But what you had in your flat at the time of your arrest is the only basis on which the court can sentence you.
The guidelines say that the appropriate range for someone who is convicted of trafficking in between 400 and 600 grammes of heroin is 15 to 20 years’ imprisonment, and the appropriate range for someone who is convicted of trafficking in between 50 and 200 grammes of cocaine is 8 to 12 years’ imprisonment. These are the appropriate ranges and sentences for someone who has been convicted after pleading not guilty. It would not be fair if I simply took the appropriate sentence for each of the drugs you were trafficking in and then aggregated them. The fairer and more realistic approach is to take the longer sentence which would have been passed for the drugs which you were trafficking in if you had to be sentenced just for them - in this case, the heroin - and then to take into account the fact that you were trafficking in cocaine as well.
The guideline for someone who is convicted of trafficking in heroin was set for defendants who were involved in trafficking at the lowest level of culpability, namely as a courier or storekeeper. The Court of Appeal has recently identified the hierarchy of roles of those who traffic in dangerous drugs. As the person responsible for buying the heroin in bulk, breaking it down, packaging it and then delivering it, your role involved a higher level of culpability. Had I been sentencing you for trafficking in the heroin alone, I would have taken 19 years’ imprisonment as my starting point. I bear in mind that the Court of Appeal has said that trafficking in a variety of drugs is an aggravating factor, but at the same time I must be careful not to sentence you twice over for the same thing. I bear in mind also that the total weight of the narcotic content of the drugs was just under 630 grammes, which would have brought you into the very bottom of the sentencing range of 20 to 23 years’ imprisonment for trafficking in 600 to 1,200 grammes of heroin and cocaine, although that is the range for someone whose level of culpability was less than yours.
In the light of the nature of your trafficking, the quantity and variety of the drugs you had in your flat, and the fact that this will not be the first time that you will serve a long sentence for trafficking in drugs, I propose to take 20 years and 6 months’ imprisonment as my starting point. In deciding upon that starting point, I have borne in mind three additional things. First, your age. You are now 60 you will be approaching old age when you come out of prison, and I am told that you are not in good health. Secondly, although you have served long sentences in the past for drug trafficking, you kept out of trouble after your last release from prison in 2011 for almost 10 years. Thirdly, I have borne in mind what the Court of Appeal has said about the various ways of checking whether the starting point the court has in mind in cases such as these where the offender has been convicted of trafficking in more than one type of drug is broadly correct. You are entitled, of course, to have your sentence reduced by one-third because of your plea of guilty on the return date when you were committed to the High Court for sentence.
In the light of the lengthy sentence I propose to pass for the offence of trafficking in dangerous drugs, and because I have to bear in mind that the overall sentence should be proportionate to the totality of your offending, I propose to pass concurrent sentences on the two offences of possessing ice. That means that the sentence which I pass on you for this offence of trafficking in dangerous drugs is 13 years and 8 months’ imprisonment, and the sentences which I pass on you for the two offences of possession of this ice is 12 months’ imprisonment for each offence, to be served concurrently with each other and concurrently with the sentence for the offence of trafficking in dangerous drugs. That makes 13 years and 8 months’ imprisonment in all.