CRIMINAL CASE NO. 160 OF 2010
COURT: You were convicted on your own plea in the magistracy during committal proceedings of a single charge of trafficking in a dangerous drug, which was 393.53 grammes of ketamine.
The facts are very straightforward. On the evening of 25 November last year, Customs officers were conducting an anti-narcotics operation in Sham Shui Po. Your behaviour attracted their attention. They intercepted you and took you to an alley for a search, where two ziplock bags were found strapped to your body. Those bags were found to contain the drugs referred to in the indictment.
You were arrested and cautioned. You told the Customs officers that you had been instructed to bring the drugs to that area by somebody named “Ah Hung” and to await further instructions. Once the instructions had been received and you had delivered the drugs, you would receive a reward of $1,500.
The guidelines set out in Hii Siew Cheng’s case are clear in respect of ketamine, and the bracket into which the quantity of drugs you were carrying falls is that which provides for a period of 9 to 12 years’ imprisonment for between 300 and 600 grammes. You had just short of 400 grammes. It seems to me that the appropriate starting point after trial for such a quantity would be one of 9 years and 9 months imprisonment.
You made admissions to the Customs officers at the scene and again during an interview with them, and you entered your plea at the earliest possible opportunity. That entitles you, on current sentencing practice, to a reduction from the starting point of one-third.
I am told that the reason you committed this offence was because you had recently begun living with a lady in Shenzhen who had become pregnant. You were in need of money, and undertook this task in order to raise some cash. That, of course, is no mitigation. There is nothing else in your personal background which has been made known to me which entitles you to any further reduction.
There is an aspect as to whether, given your criminal record, it would have been proper to enhance your sentence. You have a substantial number of previous criminal convictions of which three are similar to the offence of which you are now convicted. One occurred in 1976, one in 2001, and one in 2007, which was your last offence. Each of those offences of trafficking were dealt with in the magistracy and each resulted in sentences which experience suggests show that the quantity of drug involved in the trafficking was small.
I am told that you are no longer drug dependent, despite the fact that you have obviously been a drug user over a substantial number of years.
In the circumstances, given that the substances involved in the previous trafficking were heroin hydrochloride and this is an entirely different substance, and that this is trafficking on a very different scale to the type of trafficking in which you have previously been involved, I do not believe that it would be appropriate to enhance the sentence.
That said, given that your only mitigation in this matter is your plea of guilty, you are to serve a period of 6 years and 6 months imprisonment.