CRIMINAL CASE NO. 149 OF 2009
COURT: Leung Chung-wai, you have been committed to this court for sentence following your plea of guilty in Eastern Magistracy on 8 May this year to a charge of trafficking in 347.98 grammes of a mixture containing 308.40 grammes of heroin hydrochloride.
On the facts admitted by you, you had been followed by the police from the Lo Wu Border Control Point and then by train to Sha Tin Station, where you entered a public toilet. In the toilet, you were seen fumbling with something underneath your jacket. The police officer followed you out of the station, and searched you near the 7-Eleven Store in Citylink Plaza. The drugs that form the subject matter of the charge were found in the form of a block in the inner pocket of the jacket you were wearing.
The drugs have been estimated to have had a street value to abusers of $262,376.
When you were arrested, you claimed you were carrying the drugs from Sheung Shui to Tsuen Wan because you were in debt. Today you have admitted that in fact you brought the drugs over the border from the mainland.
I have heard from Mr Tracy that it is your gambling that got you into this trouble. While it may have led you to commit this offence, you can have been in no doubt that very serious consequences would follow if you were caught with these drugs; yet you went ahead and took that risk.
If you had been simply trafficking these drugs within Hong Kong, I would have regarded a starting point of 13½ years’ imprisonment as appropriate. The fact that you were bringing them across the border from the mainland is an aggravating feature, and, in my view, warrants a starting point of 14½ years’ imprisonment.
The only real mitigation in this case is your plea of guilty, and for that I am prepared to discount your sentence. The discount I am giving you in this case is slightly more than the usual discount.
I am sentencing you to 9½ years’ imprisonment.