Purwanti Parji v Public Prosecutor

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Chao Hick Tin JA
• Judgment Date: 15 February 2005
• Neutral Citation: [2005] SGCA 9
• Date: 15 February 2005
• Subject Matter: Sentencing,Aggravating factors,Appellant's premeditated attack of elderly victim at time when high incidence of such offences being committed,Appellant young offender at time of offence and without criminal antecedents,Criminal Procedure and Sentencing,Whether sufficient grounds for imposition of sentence of life imprisonment,Mitigating factors,Whether sufficient grounds for reduced sentence of imprisonment,Principles
• Docket Number: Criminal Appeal No 17 of 2004
• Published date: 22 February 2005
• Defendant Counsel: Bala Reddy and Seah Kim Ming Glenn (Deputy Public Prosecutors)
• Court: Court of Appeal (Singapore)
• Plaintiff Counsel: Subhas Anandan (Harry Elias Partnership) and Md Nasser bin Md Ismail (Md Nasser Ismail and Co)

15 February 2005

Yong Pung How CJ (delivering the judgment of the court):

1 The appellant, Purwanti Parji, was charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder punishable under s 304(a) of the Penal Code (Cap 224, 1985 Rev Ed). At the trial below, she pleaded guilty to the charge. The trial judge accepted her plea, duly convicted her of the charge, and sentenced her to life imprisonment. The appellant appealed against the sentence. Having dismissed the appeal, we now set out our reasons.

The facts

2 The deceased was a 57-year-old female, Har Chit Heang. The appellant is an Indonesian national. At the time of the offence, she was 17 years and 10 months old. She was employed as a domestic worker by the deceased’s daughter-in-law, Mok Wai Cheng (“Mok”). The appellant stayed with Mok, her husband and their baby daughter at their Woodlands flat during weekends. On weekdays, she stayed with the deceased, together with the deceased’s husband and younger son, in a house at Tai Keng (“the Tai Keng house”).

First information report

3 On 4 August 2003 at about 11.37am, the police received a call from the appellant, who reported, “[J]ust now my auntie [the deceased] give the baby and she go upstairs … since 1030hrs … she says she want to do something … she don’t want to open the door … I don’t know what she is doing … I cannot see her”.

The crime scene

4 When the police and paramedics arrived at the Tai Keng house, they were met by the appellant carrying a baby. No one else was present in the house. The appellant then led them to a second-floor bedroom. The door was locked from the inside. Upon a forced entry, the deceased was found lying face-up and motionless on the bed. She had a knife in her left hand, and her right wrist had some cuts that bled lightly. The blood around the cuts had dried. There were fingernail abrasions on the deceased’s neck, and her right eye was also bruised. The deceased was pronounced dead by the paramedics at 12.13pm.

5 There were no visible signs of forced entry into the house nor was there any indication that a burglary had taken place. No suicide note was found. Further enquiries with neighbours did not reveal the presence of any suspicious persons in the vicinity of the house at the material time. The police officers noted that the appellant had neatly cut fingernails.

6 The appellant was subsequently arrested at 9.55pm on the same day at the Tai Keng house, and underwent a medical examination at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital at about 11.58pm. Some superficial abrasions were noted over her right index and right middle fingers.

Post-mortem examination

7 An autopsy was performed on 5 August 2003 at about 9.35am by Dr George Paul, a forensic pathologist, at the Singapore General Hospital mortuary. Dr Paul found multiple abrasions on the deceased’s chin region and her neck. There was also extensive bleeding in the underlying neck muscles. In addition, the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage were fractured. There was a further haemorrhage under the scalp in the right temporal region, bruises on both eyelids, and extensive subconjunctival haemorrhage in both eyes.

8 According to Dr Paul, the abrasions were “consistent with those inflicted by fingertips and nails, from gripping the neck region and were sufficient, by causing damage to the neck structures within, to cause death in the ordinary course of nature by strangulation”. Dr Paul opined that the abrasions, the bleeding in the underlying neck muscles, and the fractures of the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage, suggested that the deceased was manually strangled. In the circumstances, he certified the cause of death as strangulation. He further opined that the scalp bruising appeared to be from impact with some linear blunt object.

The morning of 4 August 2003

9 When interviewed at the Criminal Investigation Department, the appellant admitted to strangling the deceased on the morning of 4 August 2003.

10 Investigations revealed that on the morning of 4 August 2003, the deceased, her husband, her younger son, her elder son and daughter-in-law (Mok) and their baby, as well as the appellant, were all at the Tai Keng house. Subsequently, everyone left the house, except the deceased, the baby and the appellant.

11 In the midst of doing household chores, and while the deceased was asleep with the baby in a second-floor bedroom, the appellant contemplated killing the deceased. She was angry with the deceased for scolding her earlier in the morning. The appellant then went to the bedroom twice, and wanted to strangle the deceased. However, she did not do so on both occasions. Instead, she went to the kitchen where she saw a knife. She took it and then returned to the bedroom.

12 Back in the bedroom, the deceased was still asleep. The appellant decided against using the knife. Instead, she sat on the deceased’s chest and began to strangle her using her hands. During the strangulation, the appellant also pressed on the deceased’s eyes. The deceased later fell off the bed, and hit her head against the bedside table. Thereafter, she did not offer any more resistance. The appellant then carried the deceased back onto the bed. She used the knife to cut the deceased’s right wrist, and placed the knife in the deceased’s left hand to make it look like the deceased had committed suicide.

13 The appellant then noticed that she had left her nail marks on the deceased’s neck. She carried the baby out of the bedroom, and closed the door. She found a nail-clipper in another room and cut all her fingernails. After feeding the baby, she called the police to provide the first information report in [3] above. The accused then went to the neighbours, telling them that the deceased had not come out from her bedroom, after intimating she was going to hurt herself and locking herself in the room.

The decision below

14 The trial judge noted that there were peculiar public interest considerations in this case (see [2004] SGHC 224). The employer-domestic worker relationship had become a regular feature of our society, and it was therefore in the public interest to uphold it. In the present case, the appellant and deceased shared a relationship that was corollary to the employer-domestic worker relationship – the appellant was a foreign domestic worker serving the deceased, who was a family member of the household who employed the appellant.

15 With regard to the killing, the trial judge was of the view that it was motivated by ill feelings and resentment towards the deceased that had festered in the appellant because of her brittle and immature temperament. The trial judge felt that this was not a case where the appellant had lost her self-control, and had merely responded spontaneously or instinctively to some grave and sudden provocation by the deceased. The trial judge also emphasised that the appellant had systematically sought to dissociate herself from the homicide. In the circumstances, the trial judge felt that there was a considerable degree of premeditation on the appellant’s part.

16 The trial judge acknowledged that the appellant was a young offender, being barely 18 years old when she committed the offence. However, he felt that a sentence of ten years’ imprisonment would be wholly inappropriate and inadequate in the circumstances, and was of the view that the appropriate punishment should be a life imprisonment sentence to meet the ends of justice.

The appeal

17 Counsel for the appellant contended that the sentence of life imprisonment was manifestly excessive, and urged this court to reduce the sentence to ten years’ imprisonment. On the other hand, the Prosecution submitted that the sentence of life imprisonment imposed was warranted in the circumstances, and that a sentence of ten years’ imprisonment would be manifestly inadequate. The submissions that both parties had advanced can be conveniently categorised under the following heads:

(a) The law on sentencing an offender to life imprisonment, in particular, a young offender;

(b) The aggravating factors;

(c) The mitigating factors; and

(d) Sentencing precedents.

We discuss each head in turn.

The law

18 Section 304(a) of the Penal Code provides that whoever commits culpable homicide not amounting to murder shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or imprisonment for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine or to caning, if the act by which death is caused is done with the intention of causing death, or of causing such bodily injury as is likely to cause death.

19 In Neo Man Lee v PP [1991] SLR 146 (“Neo Man Lee”), a case cited by both counsel for the appellant and the Prosecution, the then Singapore Court of Criminal Appeal had broadly endorsed at 148, [7] three conditions laid down by the English Court of Appeal in R v Hodgson (1968) 52 Cr App R 113 (“Hodgson”), which would justify imposing a sentence of life imprisonment, namely:

(a) The offence or offences are in themselves grave enough to require a very long sentence;

(b) It appears from the nature of the offences or from the defendant’s history that he is a person of unstable character likely to commit such offences in the future; and

(c) If the offences are committed, the consequences to others may be specially injurious, as in the case of sexual offences or crimes of violence.

For convenience, we will refer to the conditions as the Hodgson conditions. We note that the Hodgson conditions remain applicable post-Abdul Nasir bin Amer Hamsah v PP [1997] 3 SLR 643, where this court decided that life imprisonment meant imprisonment for the remainder of the prisoner’s natural life: see Kwok Teng Soon v PP (Criminal Appeal No 22 of 2001), affirming the decision of the lower court reported in PP v Kwok Teng Soon [2001] 4 SLR 516.

20 Counsel for the appellant conceded that condition (a) is satisfied. With regard to condition (c), counsel conceded that the injuries inflicted by the respondent were of a...