Public Prosecutor v Chee Soon Juan and another

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Thian Yee Sze
• Judgment Date: 31 May 2010
• Neutral Citation: [2010] SGDC 238
• Court: District Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: Police Summons No 718, 721, 726 & 729 of 2006, Magistrate’s Appeal No 273 and 279 of 2009
• Published date: 11 January 2011
• Year: 2010
• Hearing Date: 31 May 2010
• Plaintiff Counsel: Deputy Public Prosecutor Han Ming Kuang
• Defendant Counsel: Defendants in person.
• Citation: [2010] SGDC 238

District Judge Thian Yee Sze:

The two defendants, Dr Chee Soon Juan (“Dr Chee”) and Mr Yap Keng Ho (“Mr Yap”), were each tried before me on two charges under section 19(1)(a) of the Public Entertainments and Meetings Act (Cap 257) (“PEMA” or “the Act”) for providing public entertainment in the form of an address at the walkway between Blk 269 Queen Street and Skyline Building on two separate occasions, one on 16 November 2005 at about 12:10 pm (which formed the subject-matter of PS 718 of 2006 in respect of Dr Chee and PS 726 of 2006 in respect of Mr Yap), and the other on 12 April 2006 at about 11:00 am (which formed the subject-matter of PS 721 of 2006 in respect of Dr Chee and PS 729 of 2006 in respect of Mr Yap).

According to section 3 of the Act, no “public entertainment” shall be provided unless it is in an approved place and in accordance with a licence issued by the Licensing Officer. Section 19(1)(a) of the Act stipulates that any person who provides any “public entertainment” without a licence issued under the Act shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding $10,000 upon conviction. Section 2(m) of the Schedule to the Act defines “public entertainment” to include “any lecture, talk, address, debate or discussion” “in any place to which the public or any class of the public has access whether gratuitously or otherwise”.

The legal burden on the prosecution was to prove the following elements of each of the four charges beyond a reasonable doubt: that each of the defendants were at the place, ie at the walkway between Blk 269 Queen Street and Skyline Building, at the material time; that the place in question was a place to which the public has access; that each of the defendants made an address at the material time; and that each of the defendants did not have a licence issued under the Act to make the said address.

As would be apparent from the enumeration of the elements to be proved before an offence under section 19(1)(a) could be made out, the mischief at which this legislative provision is aimed is the act of providing public entertainment without the requisite licence, and nothing more than that. It was hence unfortunate that the proceedings before me meandered along slowly over the course of 33 days largely as a result of numerous applications, contentions (many of which were irrelevant to the charges in question) and objections (many of which were without proper legal basis) raised by the defendants, which unavoidably led to delays in the commencement and the smooth progress of the trial as the court addressed and made a determination on each and every of those applications, contentions and objections.

Preliminary applications and objections

Before delving into the evidence adduced before me in determining whether the prosecution had proved each and every element of the charges the defendants faced, it would be necessary to first explain my decision on various preliminary applications made by both parties over the first few days of trial as they impacted the commencement of the trial proper.

Repeated applications for adjournment of the trial

In the first week of the trial, the court sat over three days instead of five as originally scheduled as Dr Chee sought adjournments on the first and second days to engage new counsel as his then-counsel, Mr Chia Ti Lik, had discharged himself. He also applied for the trial to be adjourned till after the hearing of another appeal against another decision in this series of charges, which was slated to be heard in August 2008. I decided to grant the adjournment only till the Friday of the first week for the following reasons: I noted that in fact, Dr Chee had indicated that he intended to engage counsel when parties attended before the judge hearing the pre-trial conference (“PTC”) on 6 June 2008, and had applied for the PTC to be adjourned. At the next PTC date on 25 June 2008, Mr Chia Ti Lik was on board as Dr Chee’s counsel. Trial dates for 14 July 2008 to 8 August 2008 were given at that PTC. That was almost three weeks prior to the commencement of the trial before me. That would have provided some time for Dr Chee to engage counsel. Be that as it may, I decided that in the best interests of Mr Chia’s client, it would be preferred if counsel came on board at the start of the proceedings. As Dr Chee informed the court of a hearing of a Criminal Motion before the High Court on Thursday, 17 July 2008 at 10 am, it would be reasonable and only fair to Dr Chee to excuse him from attendance in this court on Thursday itself, as well as to give him time to prepare for his Criminal Motion, and to re-commence the trial on Friday, 18 July 2008. I should also state that it was not in the best interests of any party, especially the two defendants, who understandably would like all these matters to be dealt with expeditiously, for this matter to keep dragging on. However, it was also not desirable to rush matters. At the same time, to adjourn this whole set of proceedings indeterminately was not necessary.

When parties returned on Day 3 of the trial that Friday, Dr Chee again applied for an adjournment of the entire set of proceedings till after 18 August 2008 as the new counsel he had instructed, Mr Joseph Chen, was engaged in other matters till then. I dismissed this latest application for adjournment for the reasons I had earlier given. It was also incumbent upon me to quote from to quote from the Supreme Court’s Registrar’s Circular No 5 of 2008 issued on 24 April 2008:

AVAILABILITY OF COUNSEL FOR HEARINGS

From time to time, the court encounters situations where parties are unable to take hearing dates due to unavailability of counsel. The court will endeavour to accommodate counsel where possible. However, the Honourable the Chief Justice has directed that all counsel be reminded that where they are unable to accommodate their client’s needs for early resolution of the case, whether this is due to their busy court schedules or other commitments, they should discharge themselves from acting, so that the client may seek alternative representation.

As a matter of fact, Dr Chee’s former counsel, Mr Chia Ti Lik, applied to discharge himself for the very reason stated in the said Registrar’s Circular, that “… I do not have enough time to handle this present trial”¹. Over the course of the past few days, the court had given Dr Chee much latitude by granting him an adjournment from the beginning of the week to the end of that week to look for counsel. The court recalled that Mr Chia informed the court that his client did not want to delay proceedings and that Dr Chee was prepared to act in person until his counsel came on board. I was, of course, mindful that this decision which I made should not take any party by surprise and leave Dr Chee unprepared for this trial. I was assured that none would result. Ample opportunity had been extended by the court to Dr Chee to engage counsel. Furthermore, I also noted that Dr Chee’s then-counsel, Mr Chia, had informed the court on Day 1 that in fact, Dr Chee was “willing to handle this trial himself for the time being before finding the next lawyer”². I should also add that in my view, the law pertaining to the interpretation and application of section 19(1)(a) of the PEMA was very settled – there were in fact a number of High Court decisions on this point, all of which were binding on this court. In the circumstances, any further adjournment was not justified. Thereafter, Mr Joseph Chen informed the court that he could no longer act for Dr Chee in the circumstances and discharged himself after representing Dr Chee for half a day on Day 3. When the trial re-commenced on Monday, 21 July 2008 (Day 4), Dr Chee asked the court to reconsider its decision with regard to his application for adjournment and rehashed the arguments raised in the first three days of the trial. I dismissed the application for the same reasons as I set out earlier. Again, on Tuesday, 22 July 2008 (Day 5), Dr Chee applied to the court for an adjournment for the same reasons, and once again, I dismissed the application for the same reasons.

Dissatisfied with my decision, Dr Chee and Mr Yap both filed Criminal Motions in the High Court to seek the order of adjournment. This Motion was heard and dismissed by Choo Han Teck J on 5 August 2008 (see Yap Keng Ho v PP [2008] SGHC 126 and Chee Soon Juan v PP [2008] SGHC 127 for the full grounds of the decision). I should add that thereafter, at many other junctures during the course of the trial, the defendants applied for adjournment for various reasons, eg to engage counsel to conduct the cross-examination witnesses, all of which I dismissed as the defendants had ample opportunity to engage counsel and more than sufficient time to prepare their case and the examination of witnesses. In any case, much of what they sought to ask of witnesses was wholly irrelevant to their defence (as detailed below).

Repeated applications for copies of video-recording taken by the police

At the same time, the defendants made repeated applications over the first four days of trials for copies of video-recording, which captured the defendants’ activities on the two days in question.

I considered Dr Chee and Mr Yap’s joint application for copies not only of the six DVDs which Mr Yap earlier watched at the police station, but also of all the video footage in relation to all the six remaining charges each defendant faced (of which two in respect of each defendant were before me) and which were pending determination in the courts. The reasons for their application were three-fold – first, that the defendants would like them to have time to prepare for their defence; second, that there was insufficient time to view the DVDs; and third, that they would like to appeal to the public for witnesses.

Taking the second point first, I was satisfied that there was...