CRIMINAL CASE NO. 157 OF 2012
COURT: On 11 May this year, the defendant pleaded guilty at the Eastern Magistrates’ Court to a single charge of trafficking in a quantity of powder containing 410 grammes of ketamine worth just over $53,000.
When the drugs were found in his possession just across the border from the Lo Wu checkpoint, he originally tried to make out they were for his own consumption. Later, he admitted that he was being paid $2,000 to deliver “K Chai” to someone in the shopping centre. He had come across the border control point about 20 minutes earlier.
The defendant is aged 54. He has a very long record, but it is right to say that he has remained out of trouble for about the last six or seven years. His last conviction in 1997 was a total of 10 years and 8 months for trafficking in dangerous drugs; there were two charges of that. It was not the first time he had been in trouble for trafficking. He had earlier received a sentence of 6 years in total in 1988, and even that was not his first conviction for trafficking.
It seems that the defendant is incapable of learning a lesson. It is perfectly apparent, as this defendant knows only too well, that his sentence is likely to be enhanced for the element of importation of drugs to Hong Kong and also because he is a trafficker who has done it many times before.
The starting point, as Mr Tolliday-Wright has correctly stated, for this sort of quantity of ketamine under the guidelines in The Secretary for Justice v Hii Siew Cheng should be 10 years’ imprisonment. The enhancement in this case for the two factors which I have identified will probably be lower than it ought to be, but I am persuaded to think it should be no more than 6 months.
Giving you a third discount for the plea of guilty you have entered early, your sentence today is one of 7 years’ imprisonment.