Ramalingam Ravinthran v AG

• Judgment Date: 31 May 2011
• Date: 31 May 2011
• Docket Number: Originating Summons No 234 of 2011
• Court: High Court (Singapore)

Ramalingam Ravinthran

Plaintiff

and

Attorney-General

Defendant

[2011] SGHC 140

Tan Lee Meng J

Originating Summons No 234 of 2011

High Court

Administrative Law—Judicial review—Ambit—Plaintiff applying for prohibition order against Director of Prisons—Plaintiff applying for mandatory order against Attorney-General—Whether possible if decisions of trial judge and Court of Appeal had not been set aside

Administrative Law—Remedies—Requirement of leave for judicial review—Both parties agreeing that application for leave for judicial review should be heard together with merits—Whether preferable

Constitutional Law—Attorney-General—Prosecutorial discretion—Defendant preferring capital charges against plaintiff for trafficking in quantity of drugs above specified threshold for mandatory death penalty—Whether exercise of prosecutorial discretion was subject to judicial review—Article 35 (8) Constitution of the Republic of Singapore (1985 Rev Ed, 1999 Reprint)

Constitutional Law—Equal protection of the law—Equality before the law—Defendant preferring capital charges against plaintiff for quantity of drugs above specified threshold for mandatory death penalty but only preferring non-capital charges against person who passed drugs to plaintiff for quantity of drugs below that threshold—Whether plaintiff's constitutional rights were breached— Articles 9, 12 (1) and 35 (8) Constitution of the Republic of Singapore (1985 Rev Ed, 1999 Reprint)

The plaintiff was arrested while in the possession of a bag which contained eight blocks of cannabis and cannabis mixture. One Sundar Arujunan (‘Sundar’) , who had been in the plaintiff's car just before the latter's arrest, was arrested on the same day. Initially, both Sundar and the plaintiff faced capital charges in relation to the drugs found in the bag. Subsequently, the charges against Sundar were reduced to non-capital charges and he pleaded guilty to those charges. He was sentenced to imprisonment for 20 years and 24 strokes of the cane.

The plaintiff, who continued to face capital charges, was convicted by the trial judge. His appeal was dismissed by the Court of Appeal. He then applied for leave to apply for the following orders: (a) that the judgment of the trial judge be quashed for being obtained as a result of discriminatory and unconstitutional prosecution; (b) that the Director of Prisons be prohibited from executing the plaintiff and that the plaintiff was granted an indefinite stay of execution; and (c) that the defendant was ordered to prefer the same charges preferred against Sundar against the plaintiff as well.

The defendant submitted that the application for the quashing order was fundamentally flawed because the High Court had no jurisdiction to quash a decision of another High Court judge, particularly because the decision of the trial judge had been upheld by the Court of Appeal. The defendant submitted that what the plaintiff should have done was to apply to the Court of Appeal for a hearing of his arguments on the alleged breaches of his constitutional rights. At the hearing of the applications, the plaintiff withdrew the application for the quashing order.

Held, dismissing the application:

(1) Leave for judicial review would be granted if there appeared to be a point which might, on further consideration, turn out to be an arguable case in favour of granting to the applicant the relief claimed. In appropriate cases, it might be preferable not to have a hearing of the application for leave followed by another hearing regarding the merits of the case should leave be granted. In this case, both parties agreed that the application for leave as well as the merits should be heard together. This was sensible because all the evidence was before the court, there was no dispute of fact and only pure questions of law had to be considered: at [5].

(2) By seeking a prohibition order against the Director of Prisons and a mandatory order against the Attorney-General, the plaintiff was inviting the High Court to completely ignore the effect of the decision of the trial judge as well as that of the Court of Appeal. The Director of Prisons was required to enforce the sentence meted out by the trial judge and upheld by the Court of Appeal unless that sentence had been set aside. Indeed, the Director of Prisons did not exercise any discretion that could be the subject matter of judicial review. As for the application for the mandatory order, the Attorney-General could not be expected to prefer different charges against the plaintiff unless the latter's conviction and sentence had been set aside. As the plaintiff's ultimate objective was to set aside his conviction and sentence, he should have applied to the Court of Appeal for leave to file a motion to re-open the case for his concerns to be considered: at [8] to [11].

(3) Except for unconstitutionality, the Attorney-General had an unfettered discretion as to when and how he exercised his prosecutorial powers pursuant to Art 35 (8) of the Constitution. There were good reasons why, except in cases of unconstitutionality, the courts should defer to the decision of the Attorney-General on the institution, conduct or discontinuance of proceedings for any offence: at [16] and [17].

(4) The possibility of judicial review of the exercise of prosecutorial discretion only arose in two situations. First, there was room for judicial review where prosecutorial discretion was abused in the sense that it was exercised in bad faith for an extraneous purpose. The second situation was where the exercise of prosecutorial discretion resulted in a contravention of constitutional protection and rights, such as where an accused was deprived of his right to equality under the law and the equal protection of the law under Art 12 (1) of the Constitution: at [18].

(5) The present case could not be distinguished from two previous Court of Appeal decisions. In the first decision, the accused was charged with murder although his accomplice was only charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder. In the second decision, the accused was charged with abetting the offence of trafficking in a quantity of cannabis which carried the mandatory death penalty, whereas the principal offender was only charged with trafficking in a smaller quantity of cannabis which did not carry the mandatory death penalty. In both cases, the court held that there was no breach of Art 12 (1) of the Constitution. Therefore, the proposition that prosecutorial discretion was subject to judicial review where Art 12 (1) of the Constitution had been breached was...