CRIMINAL CASE NO. 412 OF 2011
COURT: Today the accused has pleaded guilty to one charge of trafficking in a dangerous drug, contrary to sections 4(1)(a) and (3) of the Dangerous
Drugs Ordinance, Cap. 134. He has admitted a Summary of Facts which supports that charge.
The drug particularised in the charge was ketamine. In total, there was 820 grammes which had a street value in excess of $100,000.
The facts which gave rise to the charge are as follows. At around 5 pm on 16 July 2011, police officers observed the accused exiting a public lavatory in the Shatin Plaza at Shatin. He was carrying a black plastic bag which he was then seen to place inside the handbag of a waiting female companion.
The accused and his companion were observed to walk to a location outside Shop 31 of Lucky Plaza, also in Shatin. It was at this location that the accused and his companion were apprehended by the police officers. The handbag of the accused’s companion was searched and, from it, was found a plastic bag which itself contained a further four plastic bags. The police officers suspected that the contents of those four plastic bags was the drug ketamine.
They were both arrested and cautioned. The accused said this: “Sir, these few packets of 'K Chai' are mine. I told my woman to hold them for me. She had no idea what the packets were”. The four packets were subsequently examined by the Government Chemist and were determined to contain a total of 820 grammes of ketamine. Whilst, initially, they were both charged with trafficking in dangerous drugs, his companion was subsequently released.
The accused is 27 years of age and he is single. The female companion who was with him on that day is, I am told, his girlfriend and had been for some time. He has one prior conviction some eight years ago which is not relevant to the present charge.
On his behalf, Mr Kwan has placed before me a number of documents. These include letters from his mother, his father, his sister and a social worker. Each of them requests that he be treated as leniently as possible in all of the circumstances.
The accused is not himself a drug user. On his behalf, Mr Kwan has told me that, on this particular occasion, he had been offered $2,000 to deliver this parcel of drugs to Kwun Tong. Because of the difficult financial circumstances in his own family and that of his girlfriend, he succumbed to that temptation.
Mr Kwan, on his behalf, assures me that he is remorseful. Those persons who have submitted letters in mitigation on his behalf are present in court today to support him. Mr Kwan has given me some information about his background, including the fact that he is educated to form 3 level and that, prior to the offence, was employed occasionally as a delivery worker, earning eight to nine thousand dollars per month.
In the course of his mitigation, Mr Kwan has, in my opinion, quite properly accepted that there are no factors which would permit me to increase the usual discount beyond the one-third which is given for a plea of guilty. That is a concession which is entirely consistent with a number of observations of the Court of Appeal as to what are relevant mitigating factors in offences of this nature.
The accused is entitled and will receive a full one-third discount from the appropriate starting point after trial. Based on the observations of the Court of Appeal in Secretary for Justice v Hii Siew Cheng [2009] 1 HKLRD page 1, that starting point after trial would be 13 years for this quantity of ketamine.
The appropriate sentence then, according the full discount of one-third, would be one of 8 years and 8 months’ imprisonment and that is the sentence I impose.