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| Justice Joseph Yau ignored the defense's mitigation and appeal for leniency. |
A 42-year-old Filipina resident has been sentenced to 6
years and 10 months in jail by a High Court judge for trafficking 138 grams of
heroin just over a year ago.
Michelle A. Dabao, a former waitress, was jailed on Oct 23
by Judge Joseph Yau after she pleaded guilty earlier to a charge of drug trafficking.
Dabao was in tears as she glanced occasionally at her
husband and other relatives in the gallery while Yau reviewed the background of
her case.
Dabao was said to have been born in 1977 and studied in the
Philippines. She then worked as a waitress earning $13,000 a month. She is
married and has a 17-year-old daughter who is attending a Hong Kong school.
Dabao was arrested during a Customs raid at 9:23am on Oct 17
last year on a unit that she rented in Man Fung Industrial Bldg in Chai Wan.
Officers who barged into the unit saw Dabao holding an A4-sized document bag
and a handbag with two cellphones. In the document bag were six resealable plastic
bags containing a mixture with 138 grams of heroin hydrochloride.
Dabao told the officers she did not know the contents of the
document bag she collected next to a rubbish bin at the instruction of a man
named Pei Chai and for which she was paid $2,000.
The raiders searched the unit and found three empty document
bags like to the one seized from Dabao, several resealable plastic bags, as
well as $46.60 cash in her bag.
The prosecution said that, in a video recorded interview on
Oct 18, Dabao estimated the value of the heroin seized from her at $117,344.
During mitigation, defense counsel Leslie Parry said Dabao
was injured in a traffic accident in 2017 that kept her in hospital for four to
five months due to a surgery in which metal braces where inserted in her legs.
Parry said his client lost her income due to her injury and
the extreme pain it caused her. She did not want to bother her husband so she
borrowed money from loan sharks.
Dabao learned to abuse dangerous drugs until she was
introduced by unscrupulous acquaintances to trafficking for them to pay for the
drugs she used and settle her debt to the loan sharks, the lawyer said.
The counsel asked for leniency, saying Dabao was very
remorseful, and wished to reunite early with her husband and daughter.
Parry handed the judge three letters – one from Dabao’s
husband, who said he perceived her as a spoilt child with a good heart but is a
good mother, another from Dabao herself expressing her remorse, and, the third,
from an association of Christian pastors who said she was remorseful and begged
for leniency on her behalf.
But Justice Yau said all the mitigation pleas had no value.
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