Nagaenthran a/l K Dharmalingam v PP
Jurisdiction | Singapore |
Judge | Sundaresh Menon CJ,Andrew Phang Boon Leong JA,Judith Prakash JA,Chao Hick Tin SJ,Belinda Ang Saw Ean J |
Judgment Date | 27 May 2019 |
Neutral Citation | [2019] SGCA 37 |
Published date | 04 June 2019 |
Date | 27 May 2019 |
Year | 2019 |
Hearing Date | 24 January 2019 |
Plaintiff Counsel | Eugene Singarajah Thuraisingam, Suang Wijaya and Johannes Hadi (Eugene Thuraisingam LLP) |
Defendant Counsel | Francis Ng SC, Randeep Singh Koonar, Elaine Liew, Senthilkumaran Sabapathy and Andre Chong (Attorney-General's Chambers),Wong Woon Kwong and Tan Wee Hao (Attorney-General's Chambers) |
Court | Court of Appeal (Singapore) |
Citation | [2019] SGCA 37 |
Docket Number | Criminal Appeal No 50 of 2017 and Civil Appeal No 98 of 2018 |
On 14 November 2012, Parliament passed the Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Act 2012 (No 30 of 2012) (“the Amendment Act”), which introduced s 33B of the Misuse of Drugs Act (Cap 185, 2008 Rev Ed) (“MDA”). The amendment brought about two significant changes to the legal framework governing the sentencing of certain groups of those convicted of drug trafficking. First, it conferred upon a court the discretion to sentence an offender convicted of a drug trafficking offence that would ordinarily attract the imposition of the mandatory death penalty, to life imprisonment instead
The appellant in these appeals, Nagaenthran a/l K Dharmalingam, had been charged under s 7 of the MDA with importing not less than 42.72g of diamorphine on 22 April 2009. He was convicted after trial and his conviction was upheld by this court on appeal: see
In
Separately, on 10 December 2014, the PP had informed the court and the appellant’s counsel at the time that he would not be issuing a certificate of substantive assistance under s 33B(2)(
We do not propose to restate all the facts relating to the appellant’s conviction. Much of this has been set out in
At trial however, the appellant denied having knowledge of the contents of the bundle. He claimed instead that King had only told him that the bundle contained “company spares” or “company product”: see
At the conclusion of the trial, on 22 November 2010, the appellant was found guilty and accordingly sentenced to death. The trial Judge made a number of findings including the following:
On appeal, we affirmed all of the aforementioned findings: see
After his conviction, while awaiting execution of his sentence, the appellant was referred in March 2013 to Dr Kenneth Koh of the Institute of Mental Health for a forensic psychiatric evaluation. This was for the purpose of assessing the appellant’s suitability for resentencing under s 33B(1)(
The appellant was subsequently referred to a psychiatrist in private practice, Dr Ung Eng Khean, for a psychiatric assessment in support of the appellant’s re-sentencing application in CM 16. Dr Ung assessed the appellant on 19 April and 19 July 2016. In his report of 22 August 2016, Dr Ung noted the appellant’s claim that he had lied to Dr Koh when the latter had assessed him in March 2013. The appellant’s account to Dr Ung was that he had agreed to deliver the drugs for King, whom he referred to as his “boss”, because he was desperate for money and felt compelled to obey King out of a mixture of loyalty, awe, fear and gratitude. The appellant did not mention that King had threatened to kill his girlfriend.
In the light of Dr Ung’s 22 August 2016 report, Dr Koh referred the appellant to Dr Patricia Yap, principal clinical psychologist at the Institute of Mental Health, for a neuropsychological assessment to explore whether the appellant could have been suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (“ADHD”). Dr Yap assessed the appellant between November 2016 and January 2017, and issued a report dated 1 February 2017. What is relevant for the present purposes is the appellant’s account to Dr Yap of the reasons for his offending. This took the form of his claim that he was a member of a gang, and that he had volunteered to transport the drugs on behalf of a fellow gang member who was reluctant to do so, and that he had done so out of a misguided sense of gang loyalty and gratitude to his “boss”. He stressed that he had not been coerced into delivering the drugs; he had acted voluntarily. The appellant also recounted that he had reason to believe that the package he was tasked to carry contained drugs, and that he had known, at the time, of the death penalty for drug trafficking in Singapore. Nonetheless, although he did not know the specific quantity of drugs that would attract the death penalty, he did not think that the amount of drugs he was carrying was...
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