Wong Mimi and Another v Public Prosecutor

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Chua F A J
• Judgment Date: 22 July 1972
• Neutral Citation: [1972] SGCA 5
• Docket Number: Criminal Appeal No 22 of 1970
• Date: 22 July 1972
• Year: 1972
• Published date: 19 September 2003
• Plaintiff Counsel: Dato' David Marshall (David Marshall)
• Citation: [1972] SGCA 5
• Defendant Counsel: John Tan Chor Yong (J Tan Chor-Yong & Co),Chia Quee Khee and Ram Goswami (Deputy Public Prosecutor)
• Court: Court of Appeal (Singapore)
• Subject Matter: Trial court held that first appellant had inflicted fatal injuries on the deceased with intention of causing bodily injury,Diminished responsibility,Trial court's misdirection of law,Procedure,Whether s 34 of the Penal Code had been properly applied,Criminal Law,Criminal Procedure and Sentencing,Powers of Court of Criminal Appeal,Sections 34 and 300(c) of the Penal Code (Cap 119, 1955 Rev Ed),However, trial court did not draw irresistible inference that first appellant had requisite intention under the third limb of s 300 of the Penal Code -Whether proviso to s 54 of Supreme Court of Judicature Act (Cap 15, 1970 Rev Ed) applicable,Appeal,Offences,Common intention,Murder,Whether intention was identical or at least consistent with the common intention

On 23 December 1969 Mrs Watanabe, a Japanese woman, arrived in Singapore with her three children, the eldest an eight-year-old daughter Chieko Watanabe, to join her husband, Mr Hiroshi Watanabe, a mechanical engineer, employed by a Japanese corporation undertaking reclamation work along the eastern seafront. Mr Watanabe had come to Singapore alone in January 1966. In October 1966 he met Mimi Wong, the first appellant, who was then working as a waitress, and started dating her. About eight months after they first met they became intimate and a few months later they lived together at her home.

On 6 January 1970, two weeks after her arrival, Mrs Watanabe was killed at No 55 Jalan Sea View where she was living with her husband and children. The killing took place in the evening around 9.30pm when her husband was away from home doing late work. She was stabbed twice in the neck and once in the abdomen and she had three other knife injuries in the right hand. One of the two neck wounds cut the external jugular vein and the abdominal wound cut the aorta and nicked the lumbar vertebra. She died as a result of shock and haemorrhage from these two stab wounds, death occurring within ten minutes.

At the time of the killing the first appellant and her husband, Sim Woh Kum, the second appellant, who had lived apart from her since 1963, were in Mrs Watanabe`s home. Her husband returning home at about 10.30pm found her dead lying in a pool of blood on the floor of the bathroom on the first floor of the premises and his three children huddled together crying outside the bathroom door. He asked his eldest child, Chieko, who was responsible and she told him it was the first appellant and a man.

The appellants were charged and convicted by the High Court of the murder of Mrs Watanabe after a trial lasting over four weeks. They now appeal against their convictions.

The main prosecution witness was Chieko. During the fortnight she was in Singapore before her mother`s death she had been with the first appellant on several occasions. Her evidence was believed and accepted by the trial judges. She said that she was in bed, but not asleep that evening when she heard footsteps coming upstairs and heard voices, one a man`s voice, in the corridor outside her bedroom. Then the first appellant entered her bedroom, walked round the room and then walked out. After that she heard voices coming from the adjacent bathroom and then she heard her mother scream in pain. She got out of bed and went to the bathroom. She saw her mother sitting on the bathroom floor just in front of the toilet bowl. A man, whom she subsequently identified as the second appellant at an identification parade, was pulling her mother`s left hand and the first appellant was holding her mother`s right hand. She cried when she saw blood on her mother`s chest but when the first appellant covered her mouth with her hand she stopped crying whereupon the first appellant released her. She then went back to her bedroom and tried but failed to awaken her brother. She then returned to the bathroom and saw the appellants rushing down the stairs. She saw her mother standing in the bathroom, staggering a few steps and falling down. She cried `mother, mother` but there was no response. Subsequently she managed to wake her brother and sister and all three of them stood outside the bathroom crying until their father on his return home found them there.

The next day, 7 January 1970, at an identification parade the second appellant was identified by Chieko as the man she saw struggling with her mother in the bathroom on the night of 6 January 1970. The second appellant was then arrested and charged with the murder of Mrs Watanabe. Later that same evening the first appellant was arrested and also charged with the murder of Mrs Watanabe. After the charge had been read out to her and the usual caution given to her she made a statement to Inspector Tan Kim Hai which was recorded by him and which recorded statement she signed.

Her statement was admitted in evidence at the trial and in it she said she went with a man to Mrs Watanabe`s house in a taxi and went upstairs where she did the stabbing.

On 8 January 1970 the second appellant made a statement before a magistrate and this statement was also admitted in evidence at the trial. In his statement he said that he met the first appellant, at her request, on 2 January when she asked him to assist her in killing `a certain person` and she would give him money in return for his assistance. He said that he advised her against doing this and told her he was not greedy for money. On 6 January at about 9pm the first appellant brought his youngest son to his house and at her request he accompanied her to her place of work and eventually to Mrs Watanabe`s house. Mrs Watanabe let them in and the first appellant told Mrs Watanabe that he was a plumber who had come to repair the broken wash basin. He said that after the first appellant had taken out a knife from her handbag, he threw some toilet cleansing liquid which was in a Glucolin tin on to the eyes of Mrs Watanabe who was then stabbed by the first appellant. Later they ran out of the house, boarded a passing taxi to the house of a friend where the first appellant stayed for the night whilst he returned to his home.

Going back to the evening of 6 January 1970, Mr Watanabe after finding his wife was dead went to the Joo Chiat Police Station with his three children and reported the fact of his wife`s death. Inspector Tan Kim Hai went to Mr Watanabe`s home and in the bathroom saw the deceased lying face upwards dead and a knife lying between her thighs. He also saw an empty Glucolin tin on the bathroom floor and noticed the wash basin was broken.

In January 1970 the first appellant was living at No 135A Rose Garden and employed a female house servant, Tan Sin Tse, who besides doing the cooking also looked after the first appellant`s daughter. Tan Sin Tse said that on the evening of 6 January 1970 the first appellant and Mr Watanabe, after he had dinner there, left the house together. Shortly after 10pm the first appellant returned home and again left the house taking her daughter with her. Tan Sin Tse carried a leather bag and put it in a taxi into which the first appellant entered with her daughter. Tan Sin Tse saw a man seated at the rear seat of the taxi.

The appellants went in the taxi to the house of Lee Cheng Swee a friend of the second appellant where she and her daughter stayed the night and left the following morning sometime between 8am and 9am. Later that afternoon she went to her stepmother`s house and confessed to having stabbed a Japanese woman with a small knife while she was intoxicated. Her stepmother then took her to the home of her natural mother.

At the trial the first appellant retracted her confession to her stepmother and her statement to the police that she stabbed the Japanese woman. She testified that she was angry with the deceased and slapped her and a fight ensued in the bathroom. While they were fighting she said the second appellant threw some liquid from a Glucolin tin at the deceased causing the deceased to scream. During the fighting the deceased bit her on her right ring finger and she pushed the deceased who fell - backwards hitting her head against a wall. She fell on top of the deceased but managed to free herself and ran downstairs and out of the deceased`s house while the second appellant was still upstairs. She stopped a passing taxi and got into it and then the second appellant also got into the taxi and they proceeded to her house from where after fetching her daughter they proceeded to the house of a friend of the second appellant.

At the trial the second appellant also retracted his statement to the magistrate that he had been asked by the first appellant to assist in killing a person with a promise of money for his assistance as well as his statement that after she took out a knife and a pair of gloves he threw the contents of a Glucolin tin which was half filled with towel cleansing liquid on to the eyes of the deceased who fell down and was then stabbed by the first appellant. His testimony at the trial was that he was taken to the deceased`s house to have a look at a broken wash basin in a bathroom; that while he waited outside the first appellant and the deceased entered the bathroom to tidy it up; that a little later he heard a commotion coming from the bathroom and a scream; that he rushed into the bathroom and saw the first appellant stabbing the deceased with a knife in the region of the neck; that he separated them and pushed the first appellant out of the bathroom and in so doing was bitten on the right index finger by the deceased who fell down sitting on the bathroom floor; that the first appellant rushed back into the bathroom but he prevented her from further assaulting the deceased by pushing her away from the deceased who was seated on the floor of the bathroom and that thereafter the first appellant ran away. He himself got frightened on seeing blood on the deceased`s chest and followed the first appellant downstairs and out of the house. They boarded a passing taxi which took them to the first appellant`s house and subsequently to the house of his friend, Lee Cheng Swee, where he arranged for her to stay the night.

The trial judges rejected the evidence of the second appellant. They found that the idea of throwing the detergent came from him; that he brought the Glucolin tin containing the detergent; that he requested the first appellant to lure the deceased to the bathroom on the pretext of inspecting the broken wash basin; that he mixed water with the detergent; that he...