Tan Peng Mong v Public Prosecutor

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Choo Han Teck J
• Judgment Date: 31 October 2013
• Neutral Citation: [2013] SGHC 229
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: Magistrate’s Appeal No 21 of 2013
• Year: 2013
• Published date: 06 November 2013
• Hearing Date: 04 October 2013
• Plaintiff Counsel: Lee Chay Pin Victor and Lew Chen Chen (Chambers Law LLP)
• Defendant Counsel: Sanjna Rai (Attorney-General's Chambers)
• Subject Matter: Criminal Law,Offences,Hurt,Offence committed by public transport worker,Sentencing
• Citation: [2013] SGHC 229

Choo Han Teck J:

This was a case in which a taxi driver assaulted his passenger. The accused taxi driver was convicted in the District Court on two charges. The first was voluntarily causing hurt and the second was using criminal force, under ss 323 and 352 respectively of the Penal Code (Cap 224, 2008 Rev Ed). He was sentenced to 10 days’ imprisonment on the first charge and a fine of $1,000 on the second. The accused appealed against conviction and sentence while the prosecution appealed against sentence. At the conclusion of the hearing I dismissed the appeals of the accused and the prosecution. I write these grounds of decision primarily to explain why I did not accept the prosecution’s argument that two decisions cited by the learned DPP, read together, lay down a standard sentence of 4 weeks’ imprisonment for “simple assaults” committed by public transport workers against their passengers.

But first I should narrate the facts and explain briefly why I dismissed the accused’s appeal against conviction. In the late afternoon of 29 October 2011, the accused, then 57 years of age, picked up a couple in his taxi, a male Caucasian aged 36 and his wife aged 27. During the journey there was recurrent disagreement between the accused and the male passenger concerning the temperature at which the air-conditioning was set. This eventually resulted in the male passenger’s embellishing a request to decrease the temperature with the expostulation “for fuck’s sake”. The trial judge found that the accused then became more aggressive in his manner. As the taxi neared the passengers’ destination, the accused asked, “You got balls? You got balls?” and told them that he was taking them somewhere other than their destination. He proceeded to navigate the taxi to the extreme right lane. While the taxi was stopped at a red light, the passengers alighted and stood on the road divider. The accused followed at once. The trial judge found that the accused grabbed the male passenger’s throat, which was the act giving rise to the charge of using criminal force. The male passenger reacted by pushing the accused away, which caused the accused to fall and fracture his left wrist. The trial judge further found that while the male passenger attended to his wife, the accused recovered, took hold of the male passenger’s jumper with his injured left hand and with his right hand swung an umbrella that hit the male passenger over the left ear. This was the act giving rise to the charge of voluntarily causing hurt. The police were called, and when they arrived they found the accused a distance away from the passengers shouting at them.

Having gone through the record, I cannot say that the trial judge’s findings of fact were against the weight of the evidence. It cannot be doubted that there was an altercation of some sort before the police arrived, and the remaining question was what exactly happened in the altercation, to which question only the accused and...