COURT: Chan Wai-lun, you have pleaded guilty in the Magistrates Court to one charge of robbery and one charge of possession of dangerous drugs and have been committed to the High Court for sentence.
I have taken into account everything said on your behalf.
The circumstances of the robbery were these. Posing as a customer for her services, you gained entry to a sex worker’s premises. Menacing her with a knife, you robbed her of $15,000 in cash. While the victim was performing oral sex on you, you photographed, or pretended to photograph her. You telephoned, or pretended to telephone someone to say that what you have photographed was to be uploaded to the internet if you were unable to leave the flat. This was obviously intended to facilitate your escape and it aggravates this offence of robbery.
You were traced through a fingerprint which you left at the premises. When you were arrested at your home, the police found there the dangerous drug the subject matter of the drug charge, namely, 0.70 gramme of a crystalline solid containing 0.68 gramme of methamphetamine hydrochloride and 88 millilitres of a liquid containing traces of methamphetamine.
For the robbery, I consider a starting point of 8 years’ imprisonment to be appropriate. For the possession of dangerous drugs, I consider a starting point of 1 year to be appropriate.
The only real mitigation available to you is provided by your guilty pleas for which I shall give you the full one-third discount, thereby reducing those sentences to one of 5 years and 4 months under the robbery charge and 8 months under the dangerous drugs possession charge.
These were separate offences calling for separate punishment, but to make all of them wholly consecutive would result in excessive punishment. Applying the totality principle to avoid that, I will make 4 months of the sentence under the drugs charge consecutive to the sentence of 5 years and 4 months under the robbery charge, to arrive at a total of 5 years and 8 months’ imprisonment which is what I consider the appropriate total punishment in this case.
I therefore sentence you to 5 years and 4 months’ imprisonment under Charge 1 and 8 months’ imprisonment under Charge 2, and I order that 4 months of the 8 months’ sentence under Charge 2 to be served consecutively to the 5 years and 4 months’ imprisonment under Charge 1. You will therefore go to prison for a total of 5 years and 8 months.