COURT: I will deal now with sentence. I will begin by saying that the defendant is extremely lucky to have had such an excellent presentation of his case placed before this court. I am particularly impressed by the very high degree of remorse expressed in the case which I can see reflected in the letters I have been shown.
The defendant, aged 18, has pleaded guilty today to trafficking in 470 grammes of a powder which contained 390 grammes of ketamine. The total value of that was worth something in the order of HK$59,000 at street value.
The offence was discovered on 9 May 2013 when the defendant was intercepted at a rear staircase on the 10th Floor of a building in King’s Road in North Point. He was carrying a bag which had 15 smaller bags inside it and when he was searched further his underpants were found to have four more bags. All of these of course contained ketamine. He told the police that he in fact was to be paid, or had been, $3,000, to collect this ketamine.
There is, as I have already indicated, some mitigation in this case to which I can give weight. The defendant had a clear record but I note that he had been entrusted with a valuable consignment of drugs and he will have known the risks he was taking by agreeing to collect them.
Now, the guidelines, as has rightly been said by Mr Pun, for trafficking in ketamine are very clearly stated in the Secretary for Justice v Hii Siew Cheng [2009] 1 HKLRD at page 1. The amount being trafficked by the defendant does, as again correctly stated by Mr Pun, fall within the 9 to 12-year bracket. It seems to me that for 390 grammes, an appropriate level of sentence would usually be 9 years and 9 months’ imprisonment after a contested trial.
Would you stand, please?
You have pleaded guilty to this charge and together with the other mitigation your counsel has put before me will ensure that you receive the full benefit of this. As I have said, I am satisfied that there is in this case a very high degree of remorse.
Your sentence is 5 years and 8 months’ imprisonment.