CRIMINAL CASE NO. 359 OF 2012
COURT: I have to sentence you for trafficking in dangerous drugs.
You were stopped, having arrived in this country from Dubai, having originally set off from Colombia, of which country you are a national. You had swallowed a total of 1.18 kilograms which contained 0.4 kilograms of cocaine.
You made immediate admissions, and you said you were to receive a reward of US$10,000, and I regard the fact that you confessed to a reward of that size as an indication that you were telling the whole truth.
It will have been explained to you that we have guidelines for sentences in drug-trafficking cases. The guidelines are based on the nature of the drug and the quantity of it.
The cocaine that you carried was 400 grammes, and there is a bracket of between 200 and 400 grammes attracting a starting point of imprisonment after trial of 12 to 15 years. You fall at the top of the bracket, and of course it is a case where you could not claim to not understand certainly the rough quantity of the drugs involved.
It is also the case that when drugs are carried across international boundaries and there is an international element to the case, that is regarded as an aggravation which enhances the starting point. For amounts over a kilogram, that is normally a 2-year enhancement. The judges here, as I understand it, for amounts under a kilogram, adopt a year. In this court we rarely deal with amounts under 500 grammes, but I am willing, in those circumstances, to say the enhancement, on the face of it, should start at 6 months for something under half a kilogram.
With a 15-year starting point and the 6-month enhancement, one is looking, after the discount of one-third for a plea of guilty which you will have been told of, at a sentence of 10 years and 4 months.
The line of reasoning to get to that sentence is based on a rigid application of the guidelines. However, the guidelines are not straitjackets, and it is said that sentencing is not a science, but an art, and frankly, the artistic side of sentencing in this case tells me that the right sentence is one of 10 years, and I will achieve that in this way: by saying that given all the things that your counsel put before me, plus the fact that I regard you as having been honest about your involvement, plus the matters that you have put in a letter to me, plus the fact that you are going to be in a different continent from your wife and your daughter; all of those things, taken together, none of which can attract any great weight in themselves, will allow me to diminish the original 15-year starting point by 4 months.
I will enhance by 4 months. They cancel each other out, and the sentence is 10 years.
Have you followed that?
ACCUSED: Yes, sir.
COURT: Do you understand?
ACCUSED: Yes, sir.
COURT: You do. You are sure?
ACCUSED: Yes, sir.
COURT: All right. In other words, I have acted on your mitigation. I have acted on your plea of guilty, and I have given you the most allowance I can in the circumstances.