Sakthivel Punithavathi v PP

JurisdictionSingapore
Judgment Date18 April 2007
Date18 April 2007
Docket NumberMagistrate's Appeal No 99 of 2006
CourtHigh Court (Singapore)
Sakthivel Punithavathi
Plaintiff
and
Public Prosecutor
Defendant

V K Rajah JA

Magistrate's Appeal No 99 of 2006

High Court

Courts and Jurisdiction–Jurisdiction–Appellate–Basis for appellate intervention of High Court in trial judge's decision–Nature of appellate intervention in trial judge's assessment of witness credibility and findings on expert evidence–Evidence–Principles–Expert evidence–Whether conflicting expert evidenceper se giving rise to reasonable doubt–Whether number of experts testifying on same point amounting to crucial indication of whether such testimony to be preferred over expert evidence to the contrary–Evidence–Principles–Expert evidence–Whether court should scrutinise credentials and relevant experience of expert in deciding weight to be given to expert's evidence–Evidence–Proof of evidence–Onus of proof–Standard of proof–Whether Prosecution proving case beyond reasonable doubt–Meaning of “beyond reasonable doubt”

The complainant was an Indian national employed by the appellant as a domestic maid in Singapore. On 10 March 2004, the complainant sustained various serious injuries to the last three fingers of her right hand, including severed extensor tendons on the ring and little fingers and a fracture of the ring finger at one place. The complainant alleged that the appellant had used a chopper and inflicted those injuries. The complainant had initially told medical authorities that she had cut herself but explained that this was an attempt to protect the appellant who had pleaded with her to do so. She had subsequently disclosed the truth because the doctor had allegedly informed her that he could help her only if she spoke the truth. The appellant, on the other hand, claimed that the complainant's injuries were self-inflicted, and that the appellant had immediately sought help from her neighbour when she noticed blood on the complainant's right hand. The appellant denied having asked the complainant to lie to the authorities about the injuries.

The Prosecution's two medical expert witnesses had testified the complainant's injuries were not typical of self-inflicted injuries, basing their conclusions on, inter alia, the direction of lacerations and the fact that the injuries were on the complainant's dominant hand. They had also confirmed that the injuries must have been caused by a number of blows (instead of a single blow). The Defence's medical expert, however, opined that the complainant's injuries were consistent with self-inflicted injuries with the presence of “classic hesitation cuts” of varying degrees. He had also indicated, inter alia, that it was unlikely the complainant would have willingly and passively been cut multiple times and that given the injuries sustained, the implement used and the size of the appellant, it was not possible for the appellant to have held the complainant's hand and cut her.

The trial judge determined that the complainant was a reliable witness who did not seek to embellish her testimony or deliberately slant her evidence against the appellant. She noted that the complainant had testified in a forthright manner, and found the complainant's evidence on the material issues to be compelling and largely unshaken. The complainant had made a statement to the police that the appellant had held her hand and cut her. However, the complainant had testified in court that she could not remember whether the appellant had held her hand while cutting her fingers. This inconsistency was dismissed by the trial judge in that the Defence had not cross-examined the complainant about the previous statement and the complainant had not been offered an opportunity to explain the contradiction. Further, the medical report tendered by the Prosecution had stated that the complainant claimed she had been tortured daily by her employers and had her fingers repeatedly cut by the appellant. The complainant had, however, made no reference in court to being tortured and had admitted that the appellant had not physically hurt her before this incident. She had also maintained that she remembered only being cutonce on her fingers before she lost consciousness. Despite this, the trial judge was not persuaded that the contrary claims in the medical report had any bearing on the complainant's credibility, commenting that the Defence had not summoned the doctors who had first attended to the complainant to verify what she had told them.

With respect to the medical evidence, the trial judge had found the Prosecution's experts' medical opinions to be inherently and logically consistent, and chose to accept their opinions that the injuries were unlikely to be self-inflicted. The trial judge had, on the contrary, rejected the Defence's expert's view that the injuries found on the complainant's hand were consistent with a case of self-infliction.

As such, the trial judge convicted the appellant on a charge of voluntarily causing grievous hurt to her maid pursuant to s 326 of the Penal Code (Cap 224, 1985 Rev Ed) and sentenced her to 15 months' imprisonment. The appellant appealed against her conviction and sentence.

Held, allowing the appeal and setting aside the conviction:

(1) The requirement that restraint be exercised at the appellate level in relation to the assessment of credibility could not be allowed to become a stumbling block for justice. In short, if the appellate court formed the view that the trial judge was relying on “demeanour” as a crutch for a decision that could not stand on terra firma, the court was entitled to carefully sift and sieve through the evidence, analysing and assessing it with reference to established objective facts, along with logic and ordinary common sense: at [69].

(2) In reviewing a trial judge's findings of fact and his assessment of witness credibility, the appropriate balance always had to be struck between recognising the advantages of exclusive access to witnesses available only to the trial court on the one hand and the concomitant need for an appellate court to discharge its constitutional duty to ensure that a conviction was warranted and safe on the other: at [73].

(3) An appellate court would be slow to criticise without good reason a trial court's findings on expert evidence. However, if the appellate court entertained doubt as to whether the evidence had been satisfactorily sifted or assessed by the trial court, it may embark on its own critical evaluation of the evidence focusing on obvious errors of fact and/or deficiencies in the reasoning process. What was axiomatic was that a judge was not entitled to substitute his own views for those of an uncontradicted expert's, but a court must not on the other hand unquestioningly accept unchallenged evidence: at [74] and [76].

(4) Where there was conflicting evidence between experts, it would not be the sheer number of experts articulating a particular opinion or view that mattered, but rather the consistency and logic of the preferred evidence that was paramount. The court should also scrutinise the credentials and relevant experience of the experts in their professed and acknowledged areas of expertise. Not all experts were of equal authority and/or reliability. It was a legal heresy to suggest that a reasonable doubt was inexorably raised in all cases where experts differed. However, genuine and irreconcilable differences between experts of comparable standing and credibility could create a reasonable doubt: at [75] and [77].

(5) The working definition of “reasonable doubt” as “reasoned doubt” mandated that all doubt, for which there was a reason related to and supported by the evidence presented, had to be excluded. Reasoned doubt might also arise by virtue of the lack of evidence submitted, if such evidence was necessary to support the Prosecution's theory of guilt. The trial judge had to be able to say precisely why and how the evidence supported the Prosecution's theory of the accused's guilt. This effectively inhibited and constrained the subjectivity of the trial judge's fact-finding mission. Requiring a trial judge to furnish the reasons for his decision did not require or compel him to seek or extract those reasons purely or mainly from arguments or testimony from the Defence. The burden of proof invariably fell (subject to statutory adjustments) on the Prosecution, and the requirement of reasoned justice did not and could not shift that burden. The criterion of proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt also prohibited the trial judge from filling in the gaps in the Prosecution's case on her own initiative and through conjecture or supposition: at [79] and [81].

(6) The complainant's narration of events was dubious and inconsistent both with numerous objective facts as well as the injuries sustained by her. The trial judge erred in according “full weight” to the complainant's evidence. She failed to exercise the necessary caution and discretion in scrutinising and evaluating the evidence for both internal and external consistency. The appellant's version of events, albeit not entirely flawless, was more inherently probable than the complainant's. To that extent, it should not have been so quickly dispensed with. Conversely, the complainant's version of facts was intrinsically improbable and should not have been so readily accorded “full weight” by the judge, largely on the basis of what struck her as “favourable” demeanour: at [91] and [96].

(7) The Prosecution's medical experts, who were considerably less experienced and thorough than the Defence's expert, could not convincingly account for the superficial cuts on the complainant's fingers. Their relatively limited experience with hand injuries coupled with references to suicide cases was neither impressive nor persuasive. It appeared from the subtext of the trial judge's grounds of decision that she was unduly impressed by the Prosecution's reliance on two medical experts, in...

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