CRIMINAL CASE NO. 23 OF 2010
COURT: Chow Chi-man, I am not going to read a sermon to you. You will be well aware of the evil of trafficking in dangerous drugs.
You have been a very realistic man; you have realised that you were caught red-handed and had no defence to this charge and you have therefore taken the common sense and realistic approach of pleading guilty to it.
Your plea of guilty not only indicates realism, it also indicates a degree of remorse and you are entitled to a substantial reduction in sentence to take account of your plea and your remorse and you will, of course, receive that substantial discount in sentence.
I take account of the fact that you have a criminal record. It is not one of the worst criminal records I have seen and I certainly do not propose to aggravate or increase your sentence because of the fact that you have previous criminal convictions.
Your counsel, Mr Beal, will have told you that there are very clear guidelines laid down for myself and all judges as to how we should deal with people who traffic in dangerous drugs. He will have told you that we are expected to stick to those guidelines unless there are very good reasons why we should not. He no doubt will have told you, and I am certainly going to tell you, that there are no very good reasons in your case as to why I should depart from those guidelines.
The quantity of cocaine involved in this case was very high, nearly a kilogram of mixture. There were, in fact, 965.11 grammes of mixture. It had an active cocaine content of 683.19 grammes.
Following those guidelines, had you pleaded not guilty, had you been tried and had the jury found you guilty, I would have been justified in sending you to prison for at least 20 years. Because of your plea of guilty, I am permitted to reduce that sentence considerably, by as much as one-third.
Your sentence, therefore, is reduced to one of 13 years and 4 months' imprisonment.