CRIMINAL CASE NO. 357 OF 2010
COURT: I have to sentence you for trafficking in dangerous drugs. The drug was ice. You were carrying 88 grammes of it and you were stopped coming across the border at Lok Ma Chau. It was not sophisticated. The drugs were found in your handbag.
You will know that sentencing for trafficking in dangerous drugs in Hong Kong is based on the nature of the drug and the quantity of it and we follow guidelines. At 88 grammes, you fall in the guideline that runs from 70 to 300 grammes, attracting a starting point, after trial, of 10 to 14 years’ imprisonment. So at 88 grammes you are near the bottom and there must be some modest increase because you were bringing it across the border.
If this was a straightforward case of you couriering the drugs into Hong Kong you would be looking at a starting point of at least 10½ years, but you are not the normal courier. You are 29. Mr So, in an attractive mitigation which made great use of understatement, painted a picture of you having a miserable life and I can accept that. You have had two children, one born in prison.
You have been left by your boyfriend and there you were with one child living seven floors up in a walk-up cubicle, costing you $2,800 a month, out of which you had to look after your young son, feed yourselves and the like, from $4,600 social comprehensive assistance. That would have been a difficult enough task if you had not been a drug addict, but I will accept what is said on your behalf that you are addicted to ice.
It is said that a third of these drugs would have been for your own consumption. I will accept that. I am well aware of the rate of consumption of addicts and I can see why you buy more cheaply over the border and bring the drugs back here for your own consumption. You frankly admit in the letter you have written to me that there was an economic dimension to the trafficking because two-thirds of it would have been sold to friends and you would have made some money doing that.
The point is to be made that, unlike the courier, you do not just let the drugs go off and not know where they are going to corrupt new users, youngsters and the like. It can be said in your case that the trafficking would have been to those whom you knew already took ice.
It would have been explained to you that your personal circumstances cannot be given too much weight in cases like this because the courts look for consistency in sentencing drug-traffickers. However, one of the arguments that is often deployed against the mitigating effect of personal circumstances is that if the courts are soft on certain categories of people, they would be exploited and used as couriers. This is not that sort of case.
What it comes to is this: that I cannot give too much weight to the mitigation I have heard, but I will give what weight I can. I will say this: that if it had have been an ordinary case, I would have taken a starting point, as I said, of at least 10½ years. With those matters of mitigation that I have mentioned, I shall reduce that to one of 8½ years. I will give you a third discount for your plea, so the resulting sentence is 5 years and 8 months. It is designed, in fact, to be a lenient sentence in the circumstances but my public duty prevents it being any more lenient.
The sentence is 5 years 8 months.