CRIMINAL CASE NO. 138 OF 2010
COURT: Sae Yip, I am now going to deal with sentence.
You were caught by the police in Mongkok after you had tried to make your escape and it took a number of officers to bring you under control. Your desperation to get away was on account of the drugs you were carrying and the large amount elsewhere which were under your control.
In your possession you carried a solid containing 13.58 grammes of ketamine and at the address in Mongkok to which you had access, you had a quantity of powder containing a further 319.79 grammes of ketamine. That is a total of 333.37 grammes or, as I said earlier, almost exactly a third of a kilo of ketamine.
Now, it is plain, despite your comparative youth, that you were well trusted to have been given such a large quantity to look after. It is also apparent from the actions you took to try to avoid the police that you were well aware of the gravity of this offence.
In the Mongkok premises, to which you had the keys, the larger quantity of ketamine was found in 15 separate bags. In addition there were three wads of re-sealable bags and a set of scales.
The answer you gave to the police to the effect that you were just keeping an eye on the “K chai” in the unit for somebody is not supported by the finding of “K chai” in your possession out in the street but I accept entirely that what you were getting up to, as you admitted, was done in order to earn money. The value of these drugs was $49,228 on the street.
You have a conviction for possessing ketamine, which is recorded as having been on 1 March 2010 when you received a 2-month prison sentence. The significance of this is that you were on bail for that offence when you committed the present offences just a few weeks later.
The sentencing tariffs for dealing in ketamine are well known to those in the trade and they are intended to provide a deterrent to would-be traffickers such as yourself. You took a chance and were caught. The guidelines in The Secretary for Justice v Hii Siew Cheng [2009] 1 HKLRD 30 provide that for between 50 and 300 grammes of ketamine a sentence of between 6 and 9 years is appropriate after trial.
I bear in mind also what was said by the Court of Appeal in HKSAR v Manalo [2001] HKLRD 557 and, reading from page 560, letter D, after the court had referred to a passage in Lau Tak Ming the court said:
“It is quite apparent from this passage in R v Lau Tak Ming [1990] 2 HKLR 370 that the court had no intention of treating couriers or storekeepers of heroin as if they were deserving of more lenient treatment than the guideline tariffs generally suggest. Not even youth, old age or disability will carry much weight and more often than not it carries none.”
Now, appropriate starting points for Counts 1 and 2 respectively are 4 years and 9 years’ imprisonment which will be reduced because of your pleas of guilty. On Count 1 there will be a sentence of 2 years and 8 months. On Count 2 there will be a sentence of 6 years’ imprisonment and those two sentences are to be served concurrently.