COURT: I have to sentence you for trafficking in dangerous drugs. It will have been explained to you that sentencing in these courts for trafficking in dangerous drugs is based upon guidelines, which are in turn based upon the nature of and quantity of the drug. Two drugs are involved in your case, ketamine and cocaine.
You were observed to approach a vehicle and inside that vehicle was a substantial amount of ketamine, which is the subject of Count 2. The weight of the ketamine itself was 5.7 kilogrammes. On your person you were found to have, when they arrested you, further ketamine; you had 200 grammes of ketamine and 72 grammes cocaine. That is the subject of Count 1. And back at your home there were further small amounts of ketamine and cocaine as particularised in the 3rd count.
The cocaine alone would put you in a guideline bracket of a sentence after trial of between eight and 12 years. There is no guideline for the quantity of ketamine you had and I am driven to look at other cases where the court has sentenced for such large amounts. All I need say now is that you couldn’t expect a sentence of less than 20 years as a starting point for that amount of ketamine and the court could well go to a higher starting point.
You are a young man of 26 years of age. You have no previous convictions. It is admitted on your behalf that you were just a delivery boy. That is a submission I am minded to accept. You have not spent your credibility trying to lie your way out of your responsibility for these matters. You pleaded guilty, so I am more likely to give more weight to submissions made on your behalf and, in particular in this case, there is a factual matter that can be taken to support the mitigation in this regard. It is this: that the vehicle in which the large amounts of ketamine was found had been registered in your name, yet examination of the application to register that vehicle in your name showed that, in fact, it had been copied from another document. But, of course, I will never know with confidence what lay behind that. But in the circumstances of this case, I will take it as an indication that there was someone above you in this dangerous drugs enterprise who was, in effect, hiding his own ownership of that vehicle and, in effect, paying you in should anyone investigate the matter.
It can be taken as an indication that you, at the bottom end of the chain, were being used. Accordingly, when it comes to applying the guidelines that I have already mentioned, my intention is to put you towards the bottom end of the scale, reflecting the role you took in the matter.
In relation to the 1st count, I shall take a starting point for the cocaine of 8 years and I shall, notionally in my head, pass a sentence of 5 years and 4 months. I shall add something to that for the presence of 200 grammes of ketamine, and I shall pass a sentence in total of 6 years on Count 1.
In relation to Count 2, I shall take a starting point of 20 years, and after the third discount, impose a sentence of 13 years and 4 months.
In relation to the 3rd count, with the smaller amounts in it that were found at your home, I shall pass a sentence giving you the one-third discount of 3 years. The sentence on Count 3 will be concurrent to all of the other sentences.
I shall order that 1 year and 8 months of the sentence on Count 1 run consecutively to the sentence on Count 2. The total is one, therefore, of 15 years imprisonment.
And I was bound to overlap to an extent, because otherwise it would ignore the presence of a very substantial amount of cocaine. A sentence of 15 years translates into what we would call a global starting point of 22.5 years. That was very close to the figure of 22 years, which your counsel, in his sensible and helpful mitigation, was forced to concede would be the lowest that he could hope for.