CRIMINAL CASE NO. 449 OF 2011
COURT: Domingo Janric Patawaran, I do not propose to read a sermon to you. The evils of dangerous drugs and the great harm that they do is well known throughout the world.
You willingly lent your aid to this filthy trade. You took the risk of being caught, and it is your misfortune that you were caught.
The fact that you were shipping this very large quantity of heroin to the mainland through Hong Kong from Vietnam adds an international aspect to this case and aggravates your offence.
There is nothing in your personal circumstances or the circumstances of commission of your offence that I find to be of mitigating value. I accept that you did this to raise money to assist with your family’s expenses, but I have to bear in mind that there are millions of people throughout the world who are in exactly the same financial straits as you were, and very, very, few of them resort to drug trafficking in order to alleviate their burden.
Your mitigation lies in your early plea of guilty and, to a small extent, in the fact that you have no known previous convictions for criminal offences. Your plea of guilty indicates realism, and realism is taken as a sign of remorse.
Mr McNamara has said all that can be said on your behalf. He will have told you, I am quite sure of this, that there are guidelines laid down by the Court of Appeal for my guidance and the guidance of all judges as to how we should sentence people who engage in drug trafficking. He will have told you that we are expected to stick to those guidelines unless there are very good reasons for us not to do so, and in your case there are no very good reasons permitting me to deviate from those guidelines. They are based on the narcotic value of the drugs in which the offender trafficked.
I have to tell you that had you pleaded not guilty, had you taken this matter to trial, had a jury found you guilty, then I, following those guidelines and taking into account the international aspect of this case, would have been justified in sentencing you to a term of imprisonment of 26 years.
Because of your plea of guilty you are entitled to a very substantial discount in that sentence.
I am reducing that period by slightly more than one-third to a sentence of 17 years’ imprisonment, which is the sentence I now pass on you.