Public Prosecutor v Wang Wenfeng
Jurisdiction | Singapore |
Judge | Lee Seiu Kin J |
Judgment Date | 07 February 2014 |
Neutral Citation | [2014] SGHC 23 |
Court | High Court (Singapore) |
Docket Number | Criminal Case No 4 of 2011 |
Published date | 17 February 2014 |
Year | 2014 |
Hearing Date | 13 November 2013 |
Plaintiff Counsel | Bala Reddy, Ilona Tan and Kelly Ho (Attorney-General's Chambers) |
Defendant Counsel | Wendell Wong and Alfian Adam Teo (Drew & Napier LLC) |
Citation | [2014] SGHC 23 |
On 20 September 2011, Wang Wenfeng (“Wang”) was convicted of murder under s 300(
The full facts of this case are set out in my judgment delivered at the end of the trial in
Wang is from Fujian Province in the People’s Republic of China. He came to Singapore to work, but at the time of the offence in April 2009, he was out of work and was required to leave Singapore by 15 April 2009. At that time, he could not afford a plane ticket home. He tried to borrow money from his younger sister and his wife but they did not lend him any. On Friday 10 April 2009, Wang decided to resort to robbery to get the money for his airfare.
In the early morning of 11 April 2009, Wang set off to Sun Plaza at Sembawang Drive, carrying with him a haversack containing a fruit knife, a pair of cotton gloves and a small bottle of water. He thought that taxi drivers would be good targets, so he flagged down a taxi. It was driven by the deceased, Yuen Swee Hong (“the Victim”). Wang directed the Victim to drive to “Bao Ping Chun” and, as they neared the destination, he directed the Victim to Jalan Selimang. When the taxi stopped at the end of Jalan Selimang, Wang had already put on his gloves and taken out his knife.
Wang used his left hand to hold the knife against the Victim’s chest and his right hand to hold onto the backrest of the driver’s seat. He told the Victim to hand over his money. A struggle ensued between Wang and the Victim and, in the course of the struggle, Wang stabbed the Victim on his chest. The Court of Appeal (“CA”) found that the Victim was stabbed at least five times (CA Judgment at [36], [38]). The injuries inflicted on the Victim were severe enough to have caused heavy bleeding (HC Judgment at [24]) such that, within two minutes, the struggle ceased and the Victim went limp. This led Wang to believe that the Victim had died. He decided to hide the body in the secondary jungle nearby. After carrying the body to a location well inside the jungle, Wang searched the Victim’s pockets and took the money he found.
Wang subsequently washed himself at a nearby beach and drove the taxi to a multi-storey car park at Canberra Road. He parked the taxi at one of the higher levels. Using the water he brought, he cleaned away the blood from part of the front cabin. He also cut the cables connecting the credit card machine which he thought was a Global Positioning System (“GPS”), took money and the Victim’s mobile phone from the taxi, cleaned the door handle, and left for home.
Sometime later on the same day, Wang went out to dispose of the incriminating items, such as the soiled clothes he had worn. He left the haversack containing these items in a forested area near Nee Soon Road. As he was journeying on a bus, he received a missed call from the Victim’s wife on the Victim’s mobile phone. He alighted and returned a call to the Victim’s wife. He told the Victim’s wife that he was holding the Victim captive and demanded $150,000 from her. Over the course of two days, from 11 April 2009 to 12 April 2009, Wang gave instructions to the Victim’s wife to make payment. When she still did not remit the money to the account number he provided, he reminded her that the Victim had not eaten for two days.
Meanwhile, Wang had secured a place on a flight departing on 14 April 2009. But before he could leave the country, he was arrested by the police on 13 April 2009.
The prosecution’s submissions The Indian courts adopt the position that the default punishment for murder is life imprisonment and that the death penalty is an exception (see
The prosecution thus submitted that where the law, in this case, s 300(
The prosecution also referred the court to the Parliamentary speech by the Minister for Law when introducing the amendments to the mandatory death penalty regime (see
In deciding whether and how to apply the death penalty to a particular offence, several factors have to be considered. In particular … three interconnected factors: (1)
the seriousness of the offence , both in terms of the harm that the commission of the offence is likely to cause to the victim and to society, and the personal culpability of the accused; (2)how frequent or widespread an offence is; and (3)deterrence . [emphasis added]
Each of the factors was analysed by the prosecution in light of the facts of this case.
In terms of the
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