COURT: Defendant, on 9 January 2023, you pleaded guilty before a magistrate to a charge of trafficking in dangerous drugs. As a result of your plea of guilty, you have been committed here to the Court of First Instance for sentence. You admitted that on 8 June 2021, at a flat on the 12th floor of Fu Sau House, Tai Wo Hau Estate, New Territories, you unlawfully trafficked in 984 grammes of a crystalline solid containing 984 grammes of methamphetamine hydrochloride. The Summary of Facts to which you have admitted can be summarised as follows.
At around 10.48 in the morning on 8 June 2021, Customs and Excise officers were conducting an operation in that building. The officers attended your home as part of their operation. Upon ringing the doorbell of the flat, you answered the door. They entered the flat and conducted a house search in your presence.
Inside your bedroom, a black rucksack, which was locked with a combination padlock, was found hanging on the wall. A Customs officer unlocked the padlock with a password voluntarily supplied by you. Inside the rucksack, the Customs officer found four plastic bags containing the drugs as stipulated in the charge. Also found in the rucksack was a batch of resealable plastic bags and two electronic scales. Inside your bedroom, a heat sealer and two mobile phones were found.
You were arrested for the offence of trafficking in dangerous drugs, and under caution, you admitted that the four bags of seized drugs was the drug ‘Ice’. You further admitted under caution that someone had given you $800 to bring the four pieces of ‘Ice’ back home.
The estimated street value of the seized drugs was $544,152.
Defendant, you were born on 25 August 1980. You are now 42 years old. You have one previous drug-related conviction back in 1998 to which you were fined $600. You have attained Form 5 level education, and you lived with your mother and aunt who are here in court today. You were employed shortly before this offence but became unemployed a few weeks prior to this offence.
Mr Jeremy Cheung has submitted written mitigation on your behalf. It is clear that apparently the reason why you committed this offence is because you succumbed to the more easy way to earn money as you were unemployed. Your reward was apparently a small amount of some $800 to bring these drugs back to your home. Mr Cheung says that you only played a small role in that you were a courier of these drugs, or rather somebody who stored these drugs for those who were going to courier it. Originally, any other mitigation as put forward by Mr Cheung has no longer been relied upon such that warrants any further discount other than your early plea of guilty.
Defendant, the amount of ‘Ice’ that you were trafficking in was in the amount of 984 grammes. The guideline case for trafficking ‘Ice’ is that of Abdallah Anwar Abbas [2009] 2 HKC 197. The bracket to which you fall in is that between 600 and 1,200 grammes, which would attract a sentence of 20 to 23 years’ imprisonment had you been convicted after trial.
Defendant, given the quantity of drugs that you were trafficking in, had you been convicted after trial, the appropriate starting point would be that of 21 years and 9 months’ imprisonment. As Mr Cheung rightly states, the strongest and only mitigating factor in this case is your plea of guilty at the earliest opportunity. A one-third discount should therefore be awarded for your early plea of guilty. You were a courier or storekeeper of these drugs.
On that basis, defendant, giving you the one-third discount, the resulting sentence to which you shall serve is one of 14 years and 6 months’ imprisonment.