COURT: On 26 April 2013 the defendant, now aged 29, pleaded guilty in Eastern Magistracy to trafficking in 890 grammes of a solid containing 730 grammes of ketamine. He has confirmed his plea today and has also agreed to the facts which were read out.
In short, the defendant’s temporary residence in Sheung Shui was raided by police on 5 October last year on the authority of a search warrant. A bag was found hidden in the sitting room which in turn was found to contain 33 plastic bags each containing a substance weighing approximately 28 grammes, or in old‑fashioned weight measurement, 1 ounce per bag.
The defendant admitted that he was proposing to sell ketamine to support his family. He claimed that he had bought the drugs for $34,000 and that it was his intention to consume half of them himself. The estimated value was $104,130. He told police that his friends would call his mobile number when they wanted to buy drugs and he claimed that he had already sold a bag for $1,200.
The claim by the defendant that he would consume half of this large quantity of ketamine is plainly untrue. Mr Kevin Chan, in a typically realistic mitigation speech for which I am grateful, has made it plain that the defendant has revised what he said to the police, and very sensibly done so. It was submitted that in fact it was his intention to consume only two of the bags that were recovered, himself.
Again, Mr Chan accepted that, in effect, the latent risk factor here was extremely high so that it may be that the quantity that the defendant was going to consume on this occasion would have made very little difference to the final result on sentence.
I should say that I have taken into account the Court of Appeal’s decision in Wong Suet Hau & Anor [2002] 1 HKLRD 69 at pages 78 to 80. The other factor which is, of course, of importance in this case is that the defendant has entered a timely plea of guilty.
Under the guidelines in the Secretary for Justice v Hii Siew Cheng [2009] 1 HKLRD 1, this quantity of ketamine falls within a band of 12 to 14 years’ imprisonment for amounts of between 600 and 1,000 grammes. In my judgment a proper starting point in this case is one of 12½ years’ imprisonment but, to take into account that a small proportion of those drugs would have been consumed by the defendant himself, I do propose to reduce the starting point to 12 years.
Mr Yeung, would you stand, please. Having regard to your plea of guilty the sentence on you is one of 8 years’ imprisonment.