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Articles 1 - 30 of 32
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Criminal Law In Myanmar, Wing Cheong Chan, Mark Mcbride, Neil: Yeo Morgan
Criminal Law In Myanmar, Wing Cheong Chan, Mark Mcbride, Neil: Yeo Morgan
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
A commentary on the Myanmar Penal Code that describes and critically evaluates the general principles of criminal responsibility contained in the Code.This book was originally published in English in 2016. It was republished in Burmese in 2023.
Escape From The Hangman's Noose? Singapore's Discretionary Death Penalty For Drug Traffickers, Wing Cheong Chan
Escape From The Hangman's Noose? Singapore's Discretionary Death Penalty For Drug Traffickers, Wing Cheong Chan
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
After nearly fifty years of the mandatory death penalty for drug offences, Singapore amended its law in 2012 to give judges a choice in certain situations to impose a sentence of death or life imprisonment instead. However, this change should not be misunderstood as an alteration in Singapore’s zero-tolerance approach towards illegal drugs. Escaping the mandatory death penalty regime under the new law requires fulfilment of strict conditions. This article reviews the exceptional circumstances that are required before judges are given the discretion to impose the death penalty or not and the application of the new law by the Singapore …
Single Crime, Dual Crime And Another? Expansion Of The Concept Of Joint Liability Under Section 34 Of The Penal Code – Public Prosecutor V Azlin Bte Arujunah And Other Appeals [2022] 2 Slr 825, Ting Xuan Jordan Chia, Natalia Mai Do Ngoc
Single Crime, Dual Crime And Another? Expansion Of The Concept Of Joint Liability Under Section 34 Of The Penal Code – Public Prosecutor V Azlin Bte Arujunah And Other Appeals [2022] 2 Slr 825, Ting Xuan Jordan Chia, Natalia Mai Do Ngoc
Singapore Law Journal (Lexicon)
It is well-understood that for most crimes to be established, the requirements of actus reus (the physical element) and mens rea (the mental element) need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. However, in situations involving joint offenders, if one of the offenders dealt the fatal blow, while the other offender acted as a lookout, can the other offender really be said to have the actus reus of the particular offence?
Improperly Obtained Evidence In Criminal Proceedings: An Updated Framework, Siyuan Chen, Zhi Jia Koh, Jian Wei Joel Soon
Improperly Obtained Evidence In Criminal Proceedings: An Updated Framework, Siyuan Chen, Zhi Jia Koh, Jian Wei Joel Soon
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
The 2012 amendments to the Evidence Act “significantly broadened the admissibility criteria for expert evidence”; at the same time, the judicial discretion to deny admissibility of relevant expert opinion evidence was also introduced. This article considers the key developments pre- and post-amendments, and in doing so provides an updated framework for prosecutors and defence counsel alike to admit and challenge expert opinion evidence in criminal proceedings. Since it complements earlier articles in this series on similar fact and hearsay evidence, readers are assumed to be broadly familiar with the features of the Evidence Act, such as its admissibility paradigm, the …
Can Delaying An Execution Due To Covid-19 Amount To Unconstitutional Discrimination?, Benjamin Joshua Ong
Can Delaying An Execution Due To Covid-19 Amount To Unconstitutional Discrimination?, Benjamin Joshua Ong
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
This note discusses the case of Syed Suhail bin Syed Zin v Attorney-General [2021] 1 SLR 809 (CA); [2021] 4 SLR 698 (HC) and its implications for equality law in Singapore.
Compensation For Frivolous Or Vexatious Prosecution, Benjamin Joshua Ong
Compensation For Frivolous Or Vexatious Prosecution, Benjamin Joshua Ong
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
According to section 359(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code, an acquitted accused person may receive compensation if the prosecution was “frivolous or vexatious”. In Parti Liyani v Public Prosecutor, Singapore’s High Court – for the first time – comprehensively discussed what section 359(3) means and how it is to be applied. This article aims to outline and comment on the High Court’s decision, and to highlight several issues which may be explored in future.
The Use Of Hearsay In Criminal Proceedings: An Updated Framework, Siyuan Chen, Wen Min Chai, Yi Hang Lau
The Use Of Hearsay In Criminal Proceedings: An Updated Framework, Siyuan Chen, Wen Min Chai, Yi Hang Lau
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
When the Evidence Act was amended in 2012, significant changes were made to the provisions concerning hearsay to broaden the gateways of admissibility.
The Use Of Similar Fact In Criminal Proceedings: An Updated Framework, Siyuan Chen
The Use Of Similar Fact In Criminal Proceedings: An Updated Framework, Siyuan Chen
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
When confronted with the question of whether to admit similiar fact for criminal cases, courts in Singapore are often faced with balancing potentially competing norms in the form of evidential expediency and fairness to the accused. Specifically, although similiar fact may help establish the ingredients of an offence, there existis a real risk that any resulting conviction of the accused and this potential weakness in inferential reasoning through indirect proof will - to use the word in its broadest sense - predjudice the accused.
Opening The Door To Fickle-Minded Guilty Pleas? Public Prosecutor V Dinesh S/O Rajantheran, Teng Jun Gerome Goh
Opening The Door To Fickle-Minded Guilty Pleas? Public Prosecutor V Dinesh S/O Rajantheran, Teng Jun Gerome Goh
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
Unlike applications to retract guilty pleas, accused persons are not required to provide valid and sufficient reasons when qualifying their guilty pleas in mitigation. In Criminal Reference No. 5 of 2018, the Court of Appeal held that section 228(4) of the Criminal Procedure Code allows accused persons to qualify their guilty pleas in mitigation to the extent that it amounts to a retraction of their guilty pleas unless there is an abuse of the court’s process. This comment considers the desirability of the current law and suggests that the law applying to such withdrawals of guilty pleas should be …
On Mandatory Criminal Sentences, Legislative Interpretation, And The Prospective Application Of The Law: A View From Singapore, Kwan Ho Lau
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
Cana court find that a criminal sentence is mandatory under the penal legislation butchoose, exceptionally, to apply that finding only to future cases? This raisesan interesting question on the prospective application of a correctconstruction of legislation, requiring consideration of difficult issuessurrounding not just the temporal application of the law but also theprotection of the interests belonging to all citizenry, including convictedpersons. Recent decisions in Singapore and elsewhere provide an opening for amore detailed inquiry to be undertaken.
City Harvest Case And The Separation Of Powers, Yihan Goh
City Harvest Case And The Separation Of Powers, Yihan Goh
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
Verdict provides important example of how the courts and Parliament play different roles in Singapore's legal system. The Court of Appeal last week upheld the reduced sentences passed in the City Harvest Church (CHC) case. Six former church leaders were charged with having conspired to commit the aggravated offence of criminal breach of trust (CBT) as an "agent" under Section 409 of the Penal Code. Departing from the earlier interpretation that had stood for the past 40 years, the court decided that Section 409 applied only to professional agents, which the former church leaders were not. The charges were reduced …
Criminal Law Act Is Useful — But Handle With Care, Tan K. B. Eugene
Criminal Law Act Is Useful — But Handle With Care, Tan K. B. Eugene
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
In a significant decision last week, Singapore’s highest court ruled that alleged global football match-fixer Dan Tan Seet Eng’s preventive detention was unlawful. His detention went beyond the scope of discretionary power vested in the Minister for Home Affairs under the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act (CLTPA). The court’s ruling drew criticisms from a former Interpol chief and, ironically, FIFA, football’s graft-ridden governing body.
Drug Traffickers' Deaths: Criticisms Of Laws Not All Fair, S. Chandra Mohan
Drug Traffickers' Deaths: Criticisms Of Laws Not All Fair, S. Chandra Mohan
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
This is a comment on the western media frenzy over the executions of eight drug traffickers in Indonesia. The commentary looks at whether the anguish over the executions following a conviction and appeals to higher courts in accordance with Indonesian law, apart fromn the loss of life,was well placed.
Probing The Law On Probation: Suggestions For Reform, Darius Chan
Probing The Law On Probation: Suggestions For Reform, Darius Chan
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
To any criminal law practitioner, the Court’s power to grant probation as a sentencing option is of significant importance. Probation represents, to their clients, the key out of incarceration.Section 5 of the Probation of Offenders Act (Cap 252, 1985 Rev Ed) (“POA”) sets out the power of the Singapore Courts to grant probation. Section 5 uses three peculiar terms to create three categories of offences, namely:1. Sentences which are “fixed by law”; 2. Sentences carrying “specified minimum sentences”; and 3. Sentences carrying “mandatory minimum sentences”.For the latter two categories of offences, the Court can only grant probation if the offender:1. …
Discretionary Death Penalty For Convicted Drug Couriers In Singapore: Reflections On High Jurisprudence Thus Far, Siyuan Chen
Discretionary Death Penalty For Convicted Drug Couriers In Singapore: Reflections On High Jurisprudence Thus Far, Siyuan Chen
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
For decades, drug trafficking was a serious offence in Singapore potentially punishable by mandatory death. In 2012, Singapore’s Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA) was amended to give the courts sentencing discretion if the accused can first prove that he was merely a courier, and to better reflect the moral culpability accorded as between mules and kingpins in the hierarchy of drug syndicates. However, there are some complications in proving this. Not only must the accused show that he was merely a courier, he must also show that he had substantively assisted the authorities in disrupting drugtrafficking activities in Singapore. This …
Counterblast: Escaping The Gallows Singapore Style, Mark Findlay
Counterblast: Escaping The Gallows Singapore Style, Mark Findlay
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
The four‐year long struggle by Yong Vui Kong to challenge his mandatory death sentence reveals how life and death decisions can turn on legal niceties. For instance, on 20 November 2009, the President of the Republic of Singapore turned down Yong's plea for clemency and this news was conveyed to the prisoner's brother by his then lawyer three days later. Along with this sad information, he was told that his brother would be hung on 4 December 2009. Yong's brother then engaged the respected human rights advocate, M. Ravi, who was granted an interview with the prisoner two days prior …
Sign Up Or Sign Off: Asia’S Reluctant Engagement With The International Criminal Court, Mark Findlay
Sign Up Or Sign Off: Asia’S Reluctant Engagement With The International Criminal Court, Mark Findlay
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
The International Criminal Court argues that there is a need to achieve universal ratification so that the majority of mankind will no longer remain outside the protection of the ICC. In the Asia/Pacific region there is a relatively low accession rate of nation states to the Rome Statute. This paper proposes a taxonomy of resistance to ratification in the region, recognising that in speculating on the reasons for resistance to the ratification of international criminal justice, local to the global across Asia and the Pacific, there is a risk in both over emphasising cultural and political difference while at the …
Discovering The Right To Criminal Disclosure: Lessons From Civil Procedure, Denise Huiwen Wong
Discovering The Right To Criminal Disclosure: Lessons From Civil Procedure, Denise Huiwen Wong
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
The amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code (Cap 68, 1985 Rev Ed) and subsequent case law developments have created a patchwork of rules governing the disclosure obligations of parties in criminal cases. This article argues that parties have thereby been endowed with a right that is exercisable in the courts to access the material to which the law says they are entitled. However, there are currently no proper procedural mechanisms in place for parties to make interlocutory applications to obtain such material. This article examines the competing values and ideals of a criminal discovery regime, and suggests that concepts such …
International Conventions And The Failure Of A Transnational Approach To Controlling Asian Crime Business, Mark Findlay, Nafis Hanif
International Conventions And The Failure Of A Transnational Approach To Controlling Asian Crime Business, Mark Findlay, Nafis Hanif
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The paper argues that without a realistic understanding of criminal enterprise located against the commercial forces shaping contemporary Asian market contexts, then domestic, bi-lateral, regional and international control initiatives are not only likely to fail in their regulatory objectives, but the premises on which they are constructed may heighten the market conditions for crime business profitability.The international convention-based approach to regulating transnational and organized crime is the framework from which a critique of non-market centred law enforcement control concentrations is developed. This critique reveals the transposition of flawed normative control considerations from domestic to supra-national control contexts, and shows how …
Taking Crime Out Of Crime Business, Mark James Findlay, Nafis Hanif
Taking Crime Out Of Crime Business, Mark James Findlay, Nafis Hanif
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
It is one thing to assert that conventional market analysis is critically useful in understanding criminal enterprise. It is more challenging to suggest that corrupt and compromised legal regulation interacts with other critical market variables to maximise market advantage for crime business in a similar manner to legitimate regulatory forces in their protection and enhancement of legitimate business enterprise. The central argument of this paper is that crime business mirrors other business forms when considered in terms of critical market variables, and that in particular regulatory forces when inverted from their original purposes can influence market conditions in the same …
A Preliminary Survey Of The Right To Presumption Of Innocence In Singapore, Siyuan Chen
A Preliminary Survey Of The Right To Presumption Of Innocence In Singapore, Siyuan Chen
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
The right to presumption of innocence is said to exist in almost all criminal justice systems, including Singapore. Curiously, however, no Singapore case has ever attempted to establish the exact source and contours of this longstanding right. This is unsatisfactory, as this diminishes the meaningfulness of what is supposed to be a fundamental right in the criminal justice process. The primary aim of this article is thus to conduct a preliminary survey of the law on the presumption of innocence in Singapore. It begins by proposing the Woolmington conception as a workable starting point, but posits a guiding principle to …
Reforming The Right To Legal Counsel In Singapore, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee
Reforming The Right To Legal Counsel In Singapore, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
This is an opinion prepared for the Criminal Law Committee of the Law Society of Singapore on an arrested person’s right to legal counsel in Singapore. Specifically, it deals with the following: (1) it summarizes pertinent aspects of the law relating to the right to legal counsel in Singapore; (2) it surveys a number of ASEAN and Commonwealth jurisdictions to determine how long after apprehension the right to counsel is generally accorded to arrested persons, and compares the legal position in these jurisdictions to the situation in Singapore; and (3) it examines two rights ancillary to the right to legal …
The Final Twist In Common Intention? Daniel Vijay S/O Katherasan V. Public Prosecutor, Siyuan Chen
The Final Twist In Common Intention? Daniel Vijay S/O Katherasan V. Public Prosecutor, Siyuan Chen
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
It was only in 2008 that the Court of Appeal made a seminal restatement of the law on common intention, particularly with respect to liability in so-called ‘twin crime’ situations. The question posed then was posed again recently in Daniel Vijay: what exactly is the required mens rea for the secondary offender in such situations? In 2008, the Court of Appeal said that the secondary offender had to subjectively know that one in his party might likely commit the collateral offence in furtherance of the common intention of carrying out the primary offence. Now, in Daniel Vijay, the Court …
The Challenges For Asian Jurisdictions In The Development Of International Criminal Justice, Mark Findlay
The Challenges For Asian Jurisdictions In The Development Of International Criminal Justice, Mark Findlay
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
The paper reviews the different frameworks for international criminal justice in which China’s influence can be measured, or should be present, looking specifically at procedural traditions on which international criminal law and its jurisprudence are said to be based. Understanding China as a transitional hybrid criminal justice model undergoing radical transformation in its justice delivery and discourse, it is argued, assists significantly in forecasting where the synthesis of international criminal procedure may be heading. Attached to a re-interpretation and critique of individualised liability is the unpacking of China’s in principle commitment to communitarian rights and social protection as a foundation …
Terrorism And Relative Justice, Mark Findlay
Terrorism And Relative Justice, Mark Findlay
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
Terrorist violence and violent justice responses have much in common. While contextually dependant, both forms of violence lay claim to contested legitimacies. The relationships between terrorism and justice responses require both theoretical and empirical examination if the prospects for controlling the violence they perpetrate is to be sharpened.
Globalisation And Urban Crime: Mean Streets Or Lost Suburbs, Mark Findlay
Globalisation And Urban Crime: Mean Streets Or Lost Suburbs, Mark Findlay
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
This parer introduces notions of contemporary globalisation and the manner in which crime and glotalisation interrelate. In particular, the importance of analysing crime and control at both local and global levels is emphasised. Issues of crime and space are addressed in the context of urbanisation. The tendencies of the city to marginalise, and the consequential criminal outcomes from this environment of modernisation (and the modem city) are discussed. Urban planning has had a crucial part to play in humanising and at the same time distinguishing the global push towards urbanisation, and crime prevention is now a recognised feature of globalised …
Medical Investigation Of Suspects By The Police, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee
Medical Investigation Of Suspects By The Police, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
Although medical examinations and samples taken from suspects' bodies in the course of police inquiries often lead to the discovery of important evidence, Singapore criminal procedure does not appear to empower the police to carry out such medical investigations. Neither does it safeguard the interests of suspects. It is submitted that the Criminal Procedure Code and other statutes should be brought up to date with modern science.
Prosecutorial Discretion And The Conditional Waiver: Lessons From The Japanese Experience, Mark Findlay
Prosecutorial Discretion And The Conditional Waiver: Lessons From The Japanese Experience, Mark Findlay
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
A unique characteristic of prosecutorial discretion in Japan is the formal practice of suspension. From the later part of last century, public prosecutors were presented with the discretionary option of waiving or suspending prosecution dependent on certain conditions.
Of Codes And Ideology: Some Notes On The Origins Of The Major Criminal Enactments Of Singapore, Andrew B.L. Phang
Of Codes And Ideology: Some Notes On The Origins Of The Major Criminal Enactments Of Singapore, Andrew B.L. Phang
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
This article, as its title suggests, surveys the historical background to the major criminal enactments of Singapore. As a subsidiary function, it also attempts to illustrate the possible ideology underlying the enactment of one particular statute, viz., the Penal Code - a possibility that might point the way toward broader conclusions as well as studies encompassing the role and function of the law in colonial Singapore from a more general point of view.
Organised Crime As Terrorism, Mark Findlay
Organised Crime As Terrorism, Mark Findlay
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
In a somewhat belated incursion into the international debate about the threat of organised crime, Federal and State governments in Australia have chosen to represent the 'menace' as an attack on the institution of the state as much as a physical and financial danger to society. This is consistent with the approaches of governments in the United States and Italy in constructing the reality of the Mafia.