Public Prosecutor v Boh Soon Ho

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Pang Khang Chau J
• Judgment Date: 20 March 2020
• Neutral Citation: [2020] SGHC 58
• Citation: [2020] SGHC 58
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Published date: 28 March 2020
• Docket Number: Criminal Case No 41 of 2019
• Plaintiff Counsel: Wong Kok Weng and Jason Chua
• Defendant Counsel: Eugene Thuraisingam, Chooi Jing Yen and Hamza Malik (Eugene Thuraisingam LLP)
• Subject Matter: Criminal Law,Offences,Murder,Special exceptions,Provocation,Diminished responsibility
• Hearing Date: 22 November 2019,10 October 2019,08 October 2019,09 October 2019,18 September 2019,20 September 2019,07 February 2020,11 October 2019,19 September 2019,06 December 2019

Pang Khang Chau J: Introduction

The accused, Boh Soon Ho, a 51-year-old male Malaysian national, was tried before me for the murder of one Zhang Huaxiang (“the deceased”). I convicted the accused and sentenced him to imprisonment for life. The accused has appealed against my decision.

The charge

The charge to which the accused claimed trial states that the accused:

… on the 21st day of March 2016, between 12.15 p.m. to 5.49 p.m., at Block 70, Circuit Road, #xx-xx, Singapore, did commit murder, to wit, by strangling one Zhang Huaxiang, female / 28 years old (D.O.B: 6 November 1987) with a towel, with the intention of causing bodily injury to the said Zhang Huaxiang, and the bodily injury intended to be inflicted is sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death, and [the accused had] thereby committed an offence under section 300(c) and punishable under section 302(2) of the Penal Code (Cap 224, 2008 Rev Ed).

[italics in original]

The facts

The essential facts surrounding the alleged offence were largely undisputed, having been set out in an 11-page Statement of Agreed Facts filed jointly by the parties. The key elements of the factual narrative below were drawn from the Statement of Agreed Facts, supplemented where relevant by evidence that emerged at trial.

The parties’ relationship

Sometime in 2011 or 2012, the accused and the deceased became acquainted with each other while they were working as part-time servers at the staff cafeteria of the Marina Bay Sands Resort.¹ Within a year of knowing each other, the accused asked the deceased out.² They continued to go out thereafter, about two to three times each week, for shopping and meals.³ They also visited casinos and gambling ships together.⁴ The accused came to address the deceased by the nickname “Princess Xiang Xiang” while the deceased called the accused by the nickname “Foodie”.⁵

Although the accused never asked the deceased to be his girlfriend,⁶ his evidence was that after two to three years, he came to consider her his girlfriend.⁷ When asked why he regarded the deceased as his girlfriend, he explained that it was because they went shopping together, they shared food and drink and she cared about him by, eg asking him to be careful at work.⁸ The accused also testified that he frequently paid for her meals and purchases.⁹ When questioned as to why he had never explicitly asked the deceased about the nature of their relationship, the accused’s common refrain was that it was “natural” and it did not occur to him to ask.¹⁰

The accused and deceased had never been physically intimate.¹¹ They did not have sexual intercourse and had never kissed each other.¹² The accused’s evidence was that throughout the course of the relationship, they had only held hands once. That was when they were in Chinatown during the Chinese New Year period, when the place was very crowded.¹³ The accused explained that he had never held her hand on other occasions because he felt embarrassed.¹⁴

One day, out of the blue, the accused asked the deceased to marry him if she did not have a boyfriend, to which the deceased responded by remaining silent.¹⁵ As such, the accused and deceased began to talk about something else and he proceeded to send her home.¹⁶ This incident occurred about three to four years after they first began going out.¹⁷ Notwithstanding this incident, the two of them continued to go out. The accused testified that nothing changed in their relationship; they continued to go shopping for clothes and necessities, and went out for meals, all of which he continued to pay for.¹⁸ At the trial, when questioned as to how he felt about the deceased’s response to his proposal for marriage, the accused said that he “didn’t feel anything much” and “didn’t have much of a reaction”.¹⁹ He continued their relationship because he “liked her a lot … loved her and …was willing to give her everything” and “didn’t think too much”.²⁰

Sometime in January 2016, the accused began to have suspicions that the deceased had a boyfriend as the deceased appeared to be avoiding him and the frequency of their meetings decreased.²¹ On the morning of Friday, 18 March 2016, the accused went to the deceased’s residence to check on her. He saw her leaving her apartment block with a man in a taxi. This made the accused feel jealous and unhappy as he believed that the deceased was “cheating” on him.²²

Events leading to the death of the deceased

Over that weekend, the accused and the deceased arranged to have a steamboat lunch at the accused’s apartment on Monday, 21 March 2016.²³ On the day in question, the deceased arrived at the accused’s apartment at about 1.00 pm.²⁴ The apartment had two bedrooms. The accused was one of the three tenants of the apartment.²⁵ He shared a bedroom with his landlord while the other two tenants shared the other bedroom.²⁶ The landlord would only stay at the apartment occasionally.²⁷ The accused was alone in the apartment when the deceased arrived.²⁸ They had their lunch in the living room as they watched the television and chatted.²⁹ Sometime during lunch, the deceased asked the accused for $1,000 because she wanted to gamble at a casino. The accused replied that he did not have that much money on him, to which the deceased responded by scolding him and calling him “useless foodie”.³⁰ The accused testified that while he was very angry, he did not want to quarrel with the deceased as they would then not be able to enjoy their lunch.³¹

After lunch, the accused washed the dishes while the deceased continued watching television in the living room.³² After he was done with the dishes, the accused returned to the living room to watch the television with the deceased. After a while, the deceased went to the accused’s bedroom to doll herself up.³³

The accused then entered the bedroom, hugged the deceased from behind and asked her for sex.³⁴ The deceased replied “crazy, get lost” in Mandarin.³⁵ The accused testified that he was very angry because he did not expect her to turn down his request or for her to call him crazy.³⁶

Nevertheless, the accused pushed her onto his bed and began kissing and touching her. According to the accused, the deceased did not initially reject him but as he tried to insert his tongue into her mouth, she threatened to bite off his tongue. When the accused tried to kiss her again, she started shouting, which caused the accused to be afraid. The accused used his hands to cover her mouth and let go when she stopped shouting.³⁷ Both of them then sat quietly at the edge of the accused’s bed for about ten minutes before the accused began touching the deceased again. He inserted both his hands under her blouse and touched her breasts and nipples. She reacted by pressing her hands against her bra from outside her blouse, which the accused interpreted as the deceased “not resist[ing] much”.³⁸

After a while, the deceased got up and went to the living room to watch the television. The accused followed her into the living room and, after about 15 minutes, asked the deceased to go home. The deceased reacted by proceeding towards the bedroom.³⁹ When asked in court why the deceased went to the bedroom when he asked her to go home, the accused suggested that it was probably to retrieve her handbag from the bedroom.⁴⁰

As the deceased approached the bedroom, the accused walked briskly towards her and locked his right arm around her neck. He then dragged her into the bedroom and they fell onto his bed. After about 20 seconds, the accused released his right arm as the deceased said that she was out of breath. The deceased had urinated on herself during the struggle and both the deceased’s skirt and the accused’s pants were wet. The deceased proceeded to comb her hair, after which she sat quietly on the foldable massage chair which was located in front of the table in the bedroom. The accused sat on the edge of the bed, facing the deceased. In his statements, the accused said that “her legs were trembling” and “[he] knew she was frightened”.⁴¹

After some time, the accused confronted the deceased about her lies to him. The accused said that he had seen her leave her block and get into a taxi with a man at around 11.00 am on 18 March 2016 even though the deceased had told him that she had left home at around 8.00am. He asked who the man was. The deceased replied that she knew the man from the casino in Sentosa and that they had gone out on four to five occasions.⁴² The accused responded saying, “I didn’t expect you to be such a person.”⁴³ The deceased then replied, “So I can go out with you but I cannot go out with him?”⁴⁴ Upon hearing this, the accused was very angry as he did not expect her to say that to him.⁴⁵

He next asked the deceased who Tian Meng was.⁴⁶ The accused had found out about Tian Meng a few years ago when he checked the deceased’s phone which she had given to him for safekeeping when she went overseas.⁴⁷ The deceased said that Tian Meng was her former boyfriend in China who had just returned to China from Singapore. She added that it was normal for Tian Meng and her to be intimate, which the accused took to mean that they were having sex.⁴⁸

The accused testified that this revelation made him extremely angry, and he was perspiring and shaking.⁴⁹ He then stood up and reached for a light blue bath towel which was hanging behind the bedroom door, and went to the mirror to wipe his perspiration.⁵⁰

He described his feelings at the time as “like a fire reached [his] head”.⁵¹ In his statement to the police, the accused explained his anger in these terms:⁵²

For the past four to five years, I had had [sic] spent so much money and times [sic] on her, yet I did not get anything in return from her.

According to the accused, he spent approximately half his income on the deceased,⁵³ which over the years came up to approximately $30,000.⁵⁴ When asked why he felt so angry, the...