Tan Wei Yi v Public Prosecutor

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judgment Date: 12 July 2005
• Date: 12 July 2005
• Docket Number: Magistrate's Appeal No 32 of 2005
• Court: High Court (Singapore)

Tan Wei Yi

Plaintiff

and

Public Prosecutor

Defendant

[2005] SGHC 124

Yong Pung How CJ

Magistrate's Appeal No 32 of 2005

High Court

Criminal Procedure and Sentencing–Appeal–Co-accused persons withdrawing respective appeals causing trial judge to conclude appellant lying in court–Whether trial judge erred in concluding appellant lying–When appellate court may interfere with trial judge's findings of fact–Evidence–Proof of evidence–Standard of proof–Whether Prosecution having to prove every relevant ingredient of charge beyond reasonable doubt–Evidence–Witnesses–Corroboration–Trial judge relying solely on victim's uncorroborated testimony to convict appellant–Whether trial judge finding victim's testimony unusually compelling–Whether trial judge's failure to make such finding amounting to error of law

The appellant was charged along with six other people, including his father, for voluntarily causing grievous hurt to the victim, alleged to be the illicit lover of the appellant's mother. The appellant's parents had divorced on the ground that the appellant's mother had committed adultery with the victim.

On 6 February 2003, the appellant and the other accused persons went to the appellant's mother's apartment to retrieve some furniture. There, the appellant's father spotted the victim in the toilet that was situated in the kitchen of the apartment. The appellant's father assaulted the victim in the toilet and thereafter dragged him into the kitchen, where two other accused persons, namely, the appellant's uncles, further assaulted him.

The victim claimed that the appellant too had participated in the episodes of assault, in particular the episode that took place in the toilet. The victim alleged that the appellant sat on him, pinned his hands down with his knees and punched him in the face. However, the appellant's mother had informed the first police officer at the scene that the appellant and three other accused persons had not participated in the episodes of assault. She identified the appellant's father and two uncles as the assailants.

Nevertheless, the district judge relied solely on the victim's evidence to convict the appellant on the charge. The appellant was sentenced to seven months' imprisonment. He appealed against both conviction and sentence.

Held, allowing the appeal against conviction and quashing the sentence:

(1) If the district judge had properly applied his mind to the evidence before him, he would have come to the conclusion that the Prosecution had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the appellant had indeed assaulted the victim. In this respect, it bore repeating that although the burden on the Prosecution was not to overcome every imaginable doubt in the case unless these doubts were real or reasonable, the Prosecution most certainly had the duty of proving every relevant ingredient of the charge beyond a reasonable doubt in order to establish its case: at [20] and [21].

(2) It was clear that the district judge relied solely on the victim's testimony in convicting the appellant, despite the fact that the victim's testimony was uncorroborated. Although there was no prohibition against relying on the evidence of one witness, there was an inherent danger in convicting an accused based only on the evidence of a single witness. The court had to be mindful of this danger and had to subject the evidence before it to careful scrutiny before arriving at a decision to convict an accused person on the basis of a sole witness' testimony. In such circumstances, it was trite law that a conviction may be sustained on the testimony of one witness only if the court made a finding that the witness' testimony was so compelling that a conviction could be based solely on it: at [22] and [23].

(3) In the present case, the district judge never made a finding as to how compelling the victim's testimony in relation to the appellant was. The district judge's failure to do so rang alarm bells as to whether he had actually exercised the appropriate level of caution when relying solely on the victim's testimony to convict the appellant. Indeed, there was in this case a very real possibility that the district judge convicted the appellant on the basis of the victim's testimony without even realising that he had to find that the victim's testimony was of such a compelling nature as to warrant the conviction. Whatever the possibilities, the fact remained that the law required the district judge to make this finding, and his not doing so was an error of law that could not be rectified: at [24] and [25].

(4) Alternatively, even if one were to argue that a specific finding, of whether the victim's testimony was indeed compelling, was a purely procedural requirement, there were also no substantive findings in the district judge's grounds of decision that indicated that the victim's testimony was so compelling that it was safe to rely solely on it to convict the appellant. Further, on a close scrutiny of the notes of evidence, it was doubtful that the victim's testimony was indeed so unusually compelling. This was because the victim's evidence in relation to the appellant was based largely on assumptions, and was riddled with inconsistencies. In the event, even if the district judge had made the specific finding that the victim's testimony in relation to the appellant was of a very compelling nature, it was clear that such a finding would have been incapable of being supported on the objective evidence: at [26], [27], [31] and [33].

(5) Of course an appellate court ought to be slow to overturn a trial judge's findings of fact, especially where they hinged on the trial judge's assessment of the credibility and veracity of witnesses. However, this was not an unassailable rule, and where an appellate court was convinced that a trial judge's findings of fact were plainly wrong or against the weight of the evidence, the appellate court had to obviously intervene: at [34].

(6) Additionally, the district judge's findings in relation to the appellant's mother's testimony left much to be desired. Her testimony actually created much doubt as to whether the appellant had indeed entered the toilet and assaulted the victim: at [37], [39], [41], [43] to [45].

(7) During the course of the hearing, the Deputy Public Prosecutor (“DPP”) submitted that the appellant must have taken part in the episode of assault that took place in the kitchen. As such, the DPP argued that the appellant should at least be convicted on a lesser charge of voluntarily causing hurt under s 323 of the Penal Code (Cap 224, 1985 Rev Ed). However, there was nothing conclusive in the notes of evidence that clearly indicated that the appellant did indeed assault the victim in the kitchen. In fact, the victim admitted that he had his eyes closed during this particular episode of assault, and was therefore unable to identify his assailants. Most importantly, the district judge himself found that the appellant did not play an active role in the assault that took place in the kitchen, and had only stood by as the appellant's father and two uncles kicked the victim. That being the case, there was no evidence to find that the appellant assaulted the victim in the kitchen, let alone any reasons to convict the appellant on a reduced charge: at [47].

(8) Notably, the district judge held that since four of the accused persons had decided to abandon their respective appeals, this signified that all of the accused persons, including the appellant, had deliberately lied to the court. The simple fact that the respective appellants had withdrawn their appeals did not translate immediately into an acceptance by the appellants that they lied in their testimony. There could be multiple reasons why appellants withdrew their appeals, some of which could be based on practical considerations such as costs. Additionally, the fact that the other appellants had withdrawn their appeals did not then mean that the appellant must have therefore lied in his testimony. This was an illogical train of thought and an erroneous one at that: at [48] and [49].

(9) The DPP argued that since the appellant was, at all material times, following closely behind his father, this therefore meant that the appellant must have also followed his father into the toilet or at least taken part in the assault at some point in time. However, it did not mean that just because the appellant followed his father closely, he must have therefore assaulted the victim. The Prosecution's burden was always to prove an accused person's commission of an offence beyond a reasonable doubt. Where there was reasonable doubt as to whether an accused person had indeed committed the offence that he was charged with, the court would almost invariably have to record an acquittal on that charge. Likewise, in this case, there was a reasonable doubt as to whether the appellant assaulted the victim at any point in time, the very essence of the charge of voluntarily causing grievous hurt. That being the case, it was clear that the Prosecution had not proven its case against the appellant, and therefore, the appellant had to be acquitted on the charge: at [54] and [55].

Chen Jian Wei v PP [2002] 1 SLR (R) 620; [2002] 2 SLR 255 (folld)

Govindaraj Perumalsamy v PP [2004] SGHC 16 (folld)

Jimina Jacee d/o C D Athananasius v PP [1999] 3 SLR (R) 826; [2000] 1 SLR 205 (refd)

Khua Kian Keong v PP [2003] 4 SLR (R) 526; [2003] 4 SLR 526 (folld)

Kuek Ah Lek v PP [1995] 2 SLR (R) 766; [1995] 3 SLR 252 (folld)

Kwan Peng Hong v PP [2000] 2 SLR (R) 824; [2000] 4 SLR 96 (refd)

Lim Ah Poh v PP [1992] 1 SLR (R) 192; [1992] 1 SLR 713 (refd)

Low Lin Lin v PP [2002] 2 SLR (R) 881; [2002] 4 SLR 14 (folld)

Mohammed Zairi bin Mohamad Mohtar v PP [2002] 1 SLR (R) 211; [2002] 1 SLR 344 (refd)

Ng So Kuen Connie v PP [2003] 3 SLR (R) 178; [2003] 3 SLR 178 (refd)

P Hua v PP [2004] SGHC 33 (folld)

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