Jamaludin bin Ibrahim v Public Prosecutor

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Karthigesu JA
• Judgment Date: 25 February 1995
• Neutral Citation: [1995] SGCA 19
• Docket Number: Criminal Appeal No 44 of 1994
• Date: 25 February 1995
• Year: 1995
• Published date: 19 September 2003
• Plaintiff Counsel: Subhas Anandan (MPD Nair & Co) and Sharon Goh (Palakrishnan & Partners)
• Citation: [1995] SGCA 19
• Defendant Counsel: Jennifer Marie (Deputy Public Prosecutor)
• Court: Court of Appeal (Singapore)
• Subject Matter: Allegations of hallucinations and loss of memory,Whether medical evidence supported appellant's allegations,s 300 exception 7 Penal Code (Cap 224),Criminal Law,Special exceptions,Whether appellant suffering from paradoxical rage induced by consumption of valium,Diminished responsibility,Actus reus of murder not challenged

The appellant was convicted in the High Court of having committed two offences of murder on 26 February 1993 between 9am and 1pm at Blk 626, Hougang Avenue 8, #12-162, Singapore 1955 by causing the deaths of Lau Gek Leng (`Lau`) and Luke Yip Khuan (`Luke`). Against his conviction, he appealed. We dismissed his appeal and now give our reasons.

The facts

The material facts are not in dispute and have been set out by the trial judge in his grounds of decision, which we respectfully adopt. There is also no dispute that the appellant had caused the deaths of the victims. The victims, Lau and Luke, were husband and wife aged 52 years and 55 years respectively at the time of their deaths. They had been immediate neighbours of the appellant since 1986, residing together with their three children, Lau Teck Thong, Lau Ai Siang and Lau Ai Tiang. Lau was unemployed and had earlier suffered from a stroke, while Luke worked as a hairdresser from her home. At the time of the offences, the appellant was 38 years old. He held no regular employment but did electrical repair jobs on a free-lance basis. He is married to Saerah bte Mohd Yusop and lived with her and their six daughters in a flat next door to the victims.

On 26 February 1993, by 8.50am, the children of the victims had all left the flat. Lau Ai Siang and Lau Teck Thong left for work at about 8am while Lau Ai Tiang, who was then a final-year student at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, left for classes at about 8.50am. Before leaving the flat, Ai Tiang heard her mother, Luke, speaking over the telephone to her friend, Law Hong Cha (`Law`) inviting the latter to visit her at the flat. At about 11.10am, Law arrived at the victims` flat and knocked on the door. She received no response and returned home. She made a telephone call to Luke from her own flat but no one answered the telephone. Ai Tiang returned home from her classes at about 1pm. She did not have the keys to the flat, and she therefore knocked on the door but received no answer. She then went to a neighbour`s flat, unit #12-168, to make a telephone call home. There was also no answer. Thinking that they could have gone to a nearby clinic at Blk 631, Hougang Avenue 8, she went there to look for them but did not find them there. On her way back to the flat, she noticed something unusual in that the curtains in the hall were drawn. She took the lift to the eleventh floor, and on coming out from the lift, she saw the appellant walking down the stairs from the twelfth floor. He neither looked at her nor spoke to her. Upon reaching the flat, Ai Tiang knocked on the door again but no one responded. She approached Saerah (the appellant`s wife) who was in the hall of her own flat and asked her if she had seen her mother leaving the flat. Saerah replied that she had not seen Luke, and that earlier on some of Luke`s customers had come but no one had opened the door. Sensing that something was dreadfully amiss, Ai Tiang called her brother, Teck Thong, and urged him to return home. Before he left his office, Teck Thong notified the police that something unfortunate could have happened to his parents at their flat. At about 2pm, Corporal Tang Kum Yuen and Police Constable Sukoor bin Mohd Amin came to the flat, followed shortly by Teck Thong. Corporal Tang used Teck Thong`s keys to open the main door of the flat while his sister proceeded to unit #12-168 to call for an ambulance.

On opening the door, Lau was seen slumped in a chair in the hall. His body was covered with blood and there was also a pool of blood on the floor. PC Sukoor remained outside the flat with Teck Thong and Ai Tiang while Corporal Tang went into the flat to investigate. Corporal Tang found a bloodstained chopper on a white towel on the floor in front of Lau`s body. He also found an adjustable spanner on top of a green scouring pad on a table next to Lau`s body. The chopper and spanner were later ascertained to be the assailant`s weapons. There were bloodstains spattered across the ceiling and on the curtains in the hall. Corporal Tang also noticed that the telephone in the hall had been disconnected from the socket. On proceeding to the kitchen, Corporal Tang found Luke`s body in a crouching position in a pool of blood. The bedroom nearest the kitchen had been ransacked. A while later, Inspector Lim Seng Meng arrived at the scene followed by an ambulance officer, Tan Ah Kim. The latter examined both the victims and pronounced them dead.

Dr Paul Chui, a forensic pathologist, arrived at the scene of the crime at about 5pm and examined the two bodies. According to Dr Chui, who also conducted the autopsy on the victims the next morning, the cause of Lau`s death was a fractured skull, while Luke died as a result of a fractured skull and fractured ribs. In his opinion, these injuries were consistent with the application of severe force by a blunt instrument such as a spanner and were sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death. The victims had evidently suffered numerous blows - there were 42 and 24 injuries noted by Dr Chui on Luke and Lau respectively. Dr Chui identified the main injury on Luke as an irregular laceration at the back of the head measuring about 9cm long with surrounding bruising. This external injury covered an underlying skeletal injury which was a depressed fracture at the right rear portion of the skull. As for Lau, Dr Chui identified the main injuries as an irregular laceration of 5cm by 2.5cm over the left temporal scalp with abraided edges and at the back of the head, lacerations of 2.5cm by 1cm long over the left occipital scalp, and patterned abrasions comprising two sets of four parallel lines over the occipital scalp in the midline. These external injuries covered an underlying fracture at the vault of the skull. Dr Chui`s evidence was not challenged by the defence.

Two of the appellant`s family members were material witnesses for the prosecution: Saerah (his wife) and Haslina bte Jamaludin (`Haslina`), his daughter aged nine years at the time of the offences; both of them gave evidence relating to the events of 26 February 1993. Saerah testified that she left the flat that morning at about 8.45am with one of her daughters, Hazlinda. She brought Hazlinda to see a doctor at the Hougang Polyclinic as she was not feeling well. Two of her other daughters, Halijah and Hafizah, had by then already left for school. Apart from the appellant, only Haslina and her youngest baby sister, Nurhidayah, were at home. Haslina gave evidence that she had been playing in the common corridor after her mother left the house. The appellant told her that he wanted to go to the victims` flat for a haircut. She saw him entering their flat and closing the door behind him. Shortly after, she heard a male voice screaming, followed by screams of a female voice coming from the victims` flat. She remained in the corridor and saw the appellant coming out from the victims` flat. His shirt was blood-stained and he was carrying a TV set. Later, he also removed a video cassette recorder (`VCR`) from the victims` flat. These items were brought over to his flat and placed in the bedroom, which had been rented out to one Mu Eng Kwai at that time.

When Saerah returned home, Haslina tried to communicate to her, by way of gestures, what she thought her father had done. She raised her right hand and pointed to the direction of the flat of the victims, made a stabbing action towards her abdomen, and pointed to the neighbours` flat again. Saerah could not understand Haslina`s gestures and ignored her. Later, Haslina also told her mother that her father had taken a TV and a VCR from the flat of the victims. Saerah looked around the flat but could not find the TV or VCR; she did not go into the lodger`s room to look for them as the key to that room was held by the appellant.

Later that morning, the appellant instructed Haslina and later Saerah to call his sister, Samiah bte Ibrahim (`Samiah`), to ask her husband, Ismail bin Hussain (`Ismail`) to come over to his flat to help him throw away an old refrigerator. When Ismail eventually arrived at about 12 noon, the appellant proceeded to give the TV set and VCR to him. The refrigerator was somehow forgotten and not disposed of. It was only after Ismail had returned home with the TV set and VCR that the appellant called Samiah to remind Ismail that he was to return and help dispose of the refrigerator. Samiah, however, told the appellant that Ismail had already left for work. Saerah also gave evidence that at the time of the incident, the family was having financial difficulties as the appellant had not been working for a few months, and there were outstanding bills such as conservancy and telephone charges.

The appellant was taken to the Criminal Investigation Department that day at about 6pm to assist the police in their investigation relating to the incident. With information given by the appellant, the TV set and VCR were recovered from Samiah`s flat. He was placed under arrest at about midnight. There were other items stolen from the victims` flat which were later found in a pink plastic bag in the storeroom of the appellant`s flat. These included six watches, two pens, S$27 in cash, two gold rings and a pair of gold earrings.

Three long statements were recorded from the appellant by the investigating officer, Insp Low Hock Peng, under s 121(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code on 2 March 1993, 6 March 1993 and 15 March...