COURT: I have to sentence you for trafficking in a dangerous drug; the drug was heroin and you had swallowed 54 pellets of it and the active ingredient in the mixture amounted to 840 grammes.
You will have been told that we sentence here by reference to guidelines which are based on the nature of the drug and the quantity of it. You fall into a bracket that runs from 600 grammes to 1,200 grammes, attracting a starting point after trial of 20-23 years’ imprisonment.
In addition, I have to look at the fact that these drugs were crossing international borders because you had come from abroad and were found at the airport, having swallowed the drugs. Give the amount of drugs you had, that is bound to attract an enhancement of a year.
I do not know, because your counsel did not deal with it specifically (and I do not blame him for it), but I suspect the size of the sentence may come as something as a surprise to you because you fit pattern of couriers that we see often in this court. People as you were, and I accept, in debt, are vulnerable to exploitation by those who make the real money out of this business.
I will put you at the bottom end of the bracket because you were merely a courier in the circumstances I have described. So that would be 20 years; I am bound to add the year I’ve referred to, that is 21, and I will take a third off for your plea of guilty.
That would result in sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment.
In the circumstances, following the guidelines as I am bound to do, that is the least sentence I judge you could have hoped to have received today.