Drug dealer loses appeal for lighter jail sentence

A railway court Tuesday upheld a lower court's decision to sentence a 48-year-old repeat drug offender to 26 months in prison for heroin possession.

The offender, surnamed Diao, a native of Suzhou, Jiangsu province, appealed the initial sentence on the grounds that it was too heavy for the crime, according to a press release from the Shanghai Railway Transportation Intermediate Court. He did not challenge the conviction.

Diao was found carrying 19.87 grams of heroin in his underwear at a train station in Suzhou on July 22. He had just arrived on a train from Nanjing, Jiangsu Province.

According to Chinese criminal law, a person can be sentenced to up to three years in prison for possessing 10 grams to 50 grams of heroin. The court can hand down a heavier sentence if the defendant committed the crime within five years of completing a sentence for a similar charge.

Diao got caught with the heroin about two months after he was released from prison for selling drugs, the court said. He had been convicted of dealing drugs three times from 2000 to 2011.

He also received administrative punishment twice for drug use.

In the trial for his most recent offense, the court gave Diao a lenient sentence because he confessed to the crime, according to the press release.

The Shanghai Railway Transportation Intermediate Court ruled that the lower court's sentence was appropriate.