A person who laundered the proceeds not of his own crime but of others’ (hereafter known as a “secondary offender”), cannot be charged as a primary offender for “dealing with property representing his benefits from criminal conduct”, an offence under section 47(1) of the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act (Cap 65A, 2000 Rev Ed) …

Can the contents of a cautioned statement, made in response to an initial charge, be relied on to discredit an accused’s defence against a subsequent and different amended charge? Where an accused person is to be found guilty of a “general offence of attempt”, what is the legal approach to be taken in determining that the accused had “taken steps …

The Court of Three Judges heard an application by the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) on Monday (8th July), which sought to set aside the conviction of Dr Soo Shuenn Chiang, who pleaded guilty to and was fined $50,000 in November last year for breaching one of his patient’s confidentiality. Dr Soo was alleged to have, without verifying the identity of …

A five-judge Court of Appeal heard two appeals separately on Thursday (4th July), both of which involved sexual offenders who were asking for their sentences to be reduced. The first appeal in the morning involved a man who pleaded guilty to charges of sexual assault by digital anal penetration and outrage of modesty, against his 7-year-old grandson. He was sentenced …

A district judge was found to have substantially plagiarised a huge portion of the Prosecution’s closing submissions, in his written grounds of decision ruling against an accused person in a drug consumption trial, to the extent that even a typographical error in the former was also found in the latter. High Court Justice Aedit Abdullah, who heard the appeal by …

The Court of Appeal has thrown out two final appeals by a Malaysian drug trafficker against his death sentence for drug trafficking on Monday (27 May), ending a series of court battles spanning a period of nearly 10 years. The final recourse for 30-year-old Nagaenthran a/l K Dharmalingam would have been to petition to the President for clemency, according to …

36-year-old Adili Chibuike Ejike, who was condemned to death 2 years ago for being found guilty of importing methamphetamine into Singapore, was cleared of the drug importation charge by the Court of Appeal on Monday (27 May) morning. As such, the Nigerian would walk out of the prison a free man. Adili arrived in Singapore in November 2011 from Lagos, …

A day before his scheduled execution for drug trafficking, 31-year-old Pannir Selvam a/l Pranthaman made an eleventh-hour bid on Thursday (23 May), before the very same Court of Appeal which dismissed his appeal, hoping to stave off his execution after his clemency petition had been rejected. The reason: he intends to file a judicial review application before the High Court …

A seemingly simple case, involving a money mule in love scams, has engendered important questions of law of public interest which reached the highest court of the land on Friday (3 May). 49-year-old divorcee and real estate agent Osborn Yap was back in court on Friday morning, in a bid to reduce his jail term for offences committed under the …

The Court of Appeal has upheld the sentence imposed on a man who killed the mother of his former boss in a robbery gone wrong more than 5 years ago. 51-year-old P Mageswaran was found guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, with the intention of causing the death, of 62-year-old Madam Kanne Lactmy. He was handed a jail …