Law Society of Singapore v Ravi s/o Madasamy

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Sundaresh Menon CJ
• Judgment Date: 21 March 2023
• Neutral Citation: [2023] SGHC 65
• Docket Number: Originating Summons No 2 of 2022
• Hearing Date: 09 November 2022
• Year: 2023
• Citation: [2023] SGHC 65
• Plaintiff Counsel: Lin Weiqi Wendy and Teo Guo Zheng, Titus (WongPartnership LLP)
• Defendant Counsel: The respondent in person.
• Subject Matter: Legal Profession,Disciplinary proceedings
• Published date: 28 March 2023

Sundaresh Menon CJ (delivering the judgment of the court): Introduction

C3J/OS 2/2022 (“OS 2”) is an application by the Law Society of Singapore (the “Law Society”) for the respondent, Mr Ravi s/o Madasamy (“Mr Ravi”), to be sanctioned under s 83(1) of the Legal Profession Act 1966 (2020 Rev Ed) (the “LPA”). The misconduct that is in issue before us arose out of comments which Mr Ravi made when he was interviewed by The Online Citizen Asia (“TOC Asia”) and other comments he subsequently posted on Facebook following the release of the Court of Appeal’s oral grounds in Gobi a/l Avedian v Public Prosecutor [2021] 1 SLR 180 (“Gobi (Review)”) on 19 October 2020. Mr Ravi’s remarks suggested improper conduct on the part of the Attorney-General, the then-Deputy Attorney-General Mr Hri Kumar Nair (the “DAG”), the prosecutors from the Attorney-General’s Chambers (“AGC”) who had been involved in Gobi (Review), and the Law Society. At the time of the alleged misconduct, Mr Ravi was an advocate and solicitor of 20 years’ standing and was practising with Carson Law Chambers.

Following a complaint made by the DAG in respect of Mr Ravi’s various comments, a disciplinary tribunal (the “DT”) was convened to investigate four primary and three alternative charges which were preferred against Mr Ravi under s 83(2) of the LPA. The DT found that three of the four primary charges against Mr Ravi were made out, but found that no cause of sufficient gravity for disciplinary action arose. It ordered Mr Ravi to pay a total penalty of $6,000 in respect of those charges.

Dissatisfied, the Law Society filed OS 2 on 20 January 2022 pursuant to s 94(3)(b) of the LPA, and contended that Mr Ravi’s misconduct amounted to due cause and warranted the imposition of more serious sanctions under s 83(1) of the LPA.

Background

We begin by setting out the backdrop against which Mr Ravi’s misconduct arose, starting with the criminal proceedings and various related events that culminated in Gobi (Review). This will help explain the kernel of Mr Ravi’s remarks which form the subject of the present disciplinary proceedings.

Criminal proceedings involving Gobi

On 11 December 2014, one Gobi a/l Avedian (“Gobi”) was arrested on suspicion of having in his possession two packets of granular substance containing a prohibited drug. In HC/CC 13/2017 (“CC 13”), which commenced on 31 January 2017, Gobi was charged under s 7 of the Misuse of Drugs Act (Cap 185, 2008 Rev Ed) (“MDA”), punishable by death under s 33(1) read with the Second Schedule of the MDA, for importing the two packets of granular substance found to contain not less than 40.22g of diamorphine, a controlled drug under Class A of the First Schedule to the MDA (the “Drugs”). Gobi’s defence counsel at the time was Mr Shashi Nathan.

At trial, the sole issue before the High Court was whether Gobi had rebutted the presumption of knowledge under s 18(2) of the MDA (the “s 18(2) MDA presumption”). Section 18(2) of the MDA states:

Presumption of possession and knowledge of controlled drugs

18.— … (2) Any person who is proved or presumed to have had a controlled drug in his or her possession is presumed, until the contrary is proved, to have known the nature of that drug.

At first instance, Gobi’s case was that he thought the Drugs were a form of mild controlled drug mixed with chocolate, and thus that he did not know that the Drugs were a Class A controlled drug. The Prosecution’s case was that Gobi “knew or was wilfully blind as to the nature of the drugs” [emphasis added]: see Public Prosecutor v Gobi a/l Avedian [2017] SGHC 145 (“Gobi (Trial)”) at [2]. At the conclusion of the trial, the High Court found Gobi’s testimony credible, and that he had rebutted the presumption of knowledge under s 18(2) of the MDA: see Gobi (Trial) at [53]. The High Court accordingly acquitted Gobi on the charge that was brought but convicted him on an amended lesser charge of attempting to import the Drugs believing it to be a controlled drug under Class C. Gobi was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment and ten strokes of the cane on the amended charge and acquitted of the capital charge.

The Prosecution appealed against Gobi’s acquittal on the capital charge in CA/CCA 20/2017 (“CCA 20”). The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and held that Gobi had failed to rebut the presumption of knowledge under s 18(2) of the MDA. On 25 October 2018, it set aside Gobi’s conviction on the amended charge and convicted Gobi of the original capital charge: see Public Prosecutor v Gobi a/l Avedian [2019] 1 SLR 113 (“Gobi (Appeal)”).

Mr Ravi began acting for Gobi in September 2019. On 3 January 2020, he filed on behalf of Gobi an application for leave to commence criminal review proceedings against the Court of Appeal’s decision in Gobi (Appeal) pursuant to s 394H of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cap 68, 2012 Rev Ed) (the “CPC”). The Court of Appeal granted leave for Gobi to file a review application pursuant to s 394I of the CPC. On 25 February 2020, Gobi duly filed CA/CM 3/2020 (“CM 3”), seeking a review of Gobi (Appeal).

This application was premised on a separate decision of the Court of Appeal in Adili Chibuike Ejike v Public Prosecutor [2019] 2 SLR 254 (“Adili”) that had been released some months earlier on 27 May 2019, but some months after the Court of Appeal rendered its decision in Gobi (Appeal). In Adili, the accused person had appealed against the High Court’s decision convicting him of trafficking in a capital amount of methamphetamine and sentencing him to the mandatory death penalty. Both at first instance and on appeal, the Prosecution relied on the presumption of possession under s 18(1) of the MDA, which provides that: 18.—(1) Any person who is proved to have had in his possession or custody or under his control — (a) anything containing a controlled drug; (b) the keys of anything containing a controlled drug; (c) the keys of any place or premises or any part thereof in which a controlled drug is found; or (d) a document of title relating to a controlled drug or any other document intended for the delivery of a controlled drug,

shall, until the contrary is proved, be presumed to have had that drug in his possession.

The Prosecution’s case, however, was that the accused had been wilfully blind to the existence of the drugs in question. The Court of Appeal held that the Prosecution could not invoke the s 18(1) MDA presumption in relation to wilful blindness because the s 18(1) presumption was a presumption of fact while the doctrine of wilful blindness was a construct of law which described a mental state falling short of actual knowledge but that was treated as its legal equivalent. The Court of Appeal, however, left open the question of whether the same was true of s 18(2) of the MDA: see Adili at [69].

Gobi’s applications for prohibitory and declaratory orders in relation to his execution

Separately, Mr Ravi on 28 January 2020 filed HC/OS 111/2020 (“OS 111”) on behalf of Gobi and one Datchinamurthy a/l Kataiah (“Datchinamurthy”). Datchinamurthy too had been sentenced to the mandatory death sentence after being convicted of trafficking in a quantity of drugs exceeding the threshold for the imposition of capital punishment: see Public Prosecutor v Christeen d/o Jayamany and another [2015] SGHC 126. Gobi and Datchinamurthy sought (amongst other orders) a prohibitory order to stay their executions in the light of their allegations that executions were being carried out by prison officials kicking prisoners on the back of the neck.

On 4 February 2020, a pre-trial conference was convened at the request of Mr Wong Woon Kwong of the AGC (“Mr Wong”). Mr Wong sought urgent hearing dates on account of the gravity of the allegations contained in OS 111. In particular, Mr Wong added that he was “... instructed to state that we are expressly reserving all our rights against Mr Ravi” (the “Reservation Statement”). Mr Ravi sought to clarify the meaning of the Reservation Statement during the hearing, but was directed by the Assistant Registrar to seek clarifications from the AGC thereafter.

On 10 February 2020, Mr Ravi filed HC/OS 181/2020 (“OS 181”) on behalf of Gobi and Datchinamurthy, seeking a declaration that the Reservation Statement constituted a breach of their right to a fair hearing. OS 111 and OS 181 were heard together on 13 February 2020 and dismissed.

Gobi (Review)

Returning to Gobi’s review application, CM 3 was heard by a five-Judge panel of the Court of Appeal on 19 October 2020. Brief grounds of the Court of Appeal’s judgment were delivered on the same day (the “Brief Grounds”), setting out its reasons for setting aside Gobi’s conviction on the capital charge and reinstating Gobi’s conviction on the amended charge imposed in Gobi (Trial). At [9] of its Brief Grounds, the Court of Appeal made the following observation:

Although we had, in Adili, expressly confined the aforesaid holdings to the s 18(1) presumption of possession, on the face of it, they seem likely to also apply to the s 18(2) presumption of knowledge. In this light, we reviewed the record and observed what seemed to us to be an inconsistency between the Prosecution’s case at the trial and its case on appeal in respect of the state of the Applicant’s knowledge of the nature of the Drugs.

[emphasis added]

The Court of Appeal then found that the Prosecution’s case had changed from one of wilful blindness at trial to one of actual knowledge on appeal. In this regard, the Court of Appeal observed that “[t]his change in the Prosecution’s case was ultimately prejudicial to [Gobi] because he was never squarely confronted with the case that he did not in fact believe what he had been told by [the relevant persons], and so he could not have responded to such a case” (see the Brief Grounds at [20]). As the Prosecution’s case at trial was premised on wilful...