Close | Public Prosecutor v Chan Yok Tuang [2008] SGDC 100 |
| DAC 39165/2007, MA 69/2008 | |
| 30 Apr 2008 | |
| District Court | |
| Adrian Soon Kim Kwee | |
| APP Olivine Lin Si Shi for the Public Prosecutor, Anthony Lim (Anthony & Wee Jin) for the accused |
Judgment
30 April 2008 District Judge Adrian Soon: 1. The Accused, Chan Yok Tuang, faced a charge under Section 506 of the Penal Code (Cap 224.) He pleaded guilty to the amended charge. The amended charge which is under the 1st limb reads as follows:- (1) DAC No 39165/2007 [Exhibit C1A] “You CHAN YOK TUANG MALE/48 YEARS NRIC NO. S 1362113 F are charged that you, on 16th day of May 2007, at the Central Police Division lockup, Singapore, did commit criminal intimidation by threatening to cause injury to the reputation of SSSgt Jessie Lim Geok Hwee, to wit, by uttering “I will shoot her to death” in Hokkien at her, with intent to cause alarm to the said SSSgt Jessie Lim Geok Hwee, and you have thereby committed an offence under Section 506 of the Penal Code (Cap 224). FACTS 2. The facts for the charge are found in the Statement of Facts (Exhibit PS1). They may be summarized as follows: On 16 May 2007, SSSgt Jessie Lim Geok Hwee was part of a party of police officers which was on the usual anti-crime rounds at Lorong 16 & 18, Geylang. The accused spotted the police officers and began to create a scene. ASP Mark Koh, who was with SSSgt Lim checked the particulars of the accused and discovered that he had secret society records. By virtue of the powers vested by Section 44(2) of the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act (Cap 67), ASP Koh detained the accused. ASP Koh and SSSgt Lim then brought the accused to the Cantonment Complex lockup. Whilst the accused was in the lockup, ASP Koh observed that he was glaring aggressively at SSSgt Lim. ASP Koh asked the accused why he was staring aggressively at SSSgt Lim. To this question, the accused snapped back by saying, “I will shoot her to death” in Hokkien while staring at SSSgt Lim. The latter took what the accused had uttered as a threat against her life. Investigation revealed that the accused had a grudge against SSSgt Lim because he felt that her regular patrols of the area by her had adversely affected his business. Thus, when he uttered the said words, his intention was to cause alarm by stating that he would file a complaint against SSSgt Lim. MITIGATION 3. The main points raised by the learned Defence Counsel in the mitigation plea pertaining to the offence proper may be listed as follows: (a) The accused was aggrieved that the police had initially suspected him of operating as a pimp; (b) The police officers’ regular patrol of the area where his hotel was situated had adversely affected his hotel’s business; (c) The accused had uttered the words as stated in the charge in the heat of the moment; (d) The accused had intended his words to mean that he would lodge a complaint against SSSgt Lim; and (e) The words were not uttered in public but in the police station. SENTENCES 4. In determining the appropriate sentences to be imposed on the accused, I considered as mitigating the fact that he had pleaded guilty to the charge. By doing so, he had demonstrated his remorse for having committed the offence. 5. On the other hand, the presence and significance of certain aggravating factors should not be overlooked. Firstly, the offence committed by the accused is by nature a serious one. While it is true that the offence of criminal intimidation concerns a threat and not the actual use of violence, it must be remembered that what is uttered by the offender is not just some idle threat but a threat to harm a person, reputation or his property. It is equally important to bear in mind the fact that the threat is made with the intent to cause alarm to a person. The degree of seriousness of a threat depends on its nature, the circumstances under which it is made and the effect on the victim. The serious nature of the offence is manifested by the punishments prescribed by Parliament even for an offence of criminal intimation simpliciter, that is, an offence under the first limb of S 506 PC. It carries a term of imprisonment of up to 2 years or a fine or both a term of imprisonment and a fine. The threat made by the accused was when he uttered in Hokkien the words, “I will shoot her to death”. While investigation revealed that what the accused intended the words to mean was that he would make a complaint against SSSgt Lim, the fact remains that the words taken in their literal sense meant that he would shoot and kill her. It was therefore natural that SSgt had interpreted the threat to be made against her life and be alarmed. It would be naive to expect the victim to respond to the threat made by asking the accused to clarify if his utterance was intended to threaten her life or her reputation. 6. Secondly, it must be recognized that the threat made by the accused was directed not just any ordinary person on the street but to a public servant. In fact it was made to a police officer no less. The significance of the status of the victim, SSSgt Lim lies in the character of the public functions she is duty bound to perform as a law enforcer. As a police officer, she is responsible to ensure that the laws of the country are enforced with firmness, fairness, even handedness and justice. In that way, law and order is preserved to ensure that peace and prosperity of the country prevails. In the course of the discharge of this duty, SSSgt Lim is often exposed to difficult situations and difficult individuals which make her task even more onerous and hazardous. Therefore, the courts have always seen the need to protect law enforcement officers from the dangers posed to them in the discharge of their duties and to make it explicitly clear that acts which threaten their well-being would not be tolerated. That this the correct approach is fortified by the following passage from Andrew Ashworth’s Sentencing and Criminal Justice (4th Edition) at p 159: It may be worth considering at this point the claims of a connected factor … that is often thought to be aggravating – that the offence was committed against a public official. Should an attack on a police officer be regarded as more grave than an attack on an ordinary citizen? One answer is that police officers are expected to place themselves in vulnerable position sometimes, as part of their job, and that people who take advantage of this commit a worse offence. Probably this line of argument could be connected with that in the previous paragraph: society needs people to undertake policing and other positions of authority, and a person who knowingly attacks such an official is striking at a fundamental institution in a way that one who attacks a private citizen is not. Because of its great social significance, it should be regarded as more serious. Thus in Attorney General Reference No. 35 of 1995 (Hartley) Lord Taylor CJ made it clear that the use of violence against a police officer ‘who was merely acting in the exercise of his duty’ was an aggravated offence; the Court of Appeal also increased the sentence in Attorney General Reference No 99 of 2003(Vidler) for similar reasons. 7. This stance is also adopted by our courts as can be observed from the following extract from the Sentencing Practice in the Subordinate Courts (2nd Edition) where it is stated at p 611 as follows: The rationale was stated by the District Court in Ng Cheng Heng v PP (MA 32/93/01) as follows: ‘Law enforcement agencies like the police have to take on the unpleasant but important tasks of enforcing the laws of the land in order to maintain social harmony, peace and justice. In the process they often have to come into contact with offenders like the accused. Police and other law enforcement agencies therefore must be protected and any act of violence should not be tolerated or condoned.’ In the English case of Fletcher (1998) 1 Cr App R (S) 7, it was said: ‘Men in the position of these officers, performing a difficult public duty in circumstances where sadly they are only too likely to encounter bad temper and unreasonableness deserve such protection as the courts can give.” 8. While the passages from Ashworth and the case of Ng Cheng Heng v PP were dealing with offences of violence relating to public officers, there is no plausible reason why the rationale enunciated therein should not logically apply to the offence of criminal intimidation with equal force. Afterall, if a physical attack is aggravated by the fact that the victim is a police officer, so too must a threat against a police officer be with utmost severity. For when the accused criminally intimidated SSSgt Lim who was undertaking policing duties, he can be said to have struck at the very heart of a fundamental social institution. His action must be construed as an aggravated one. The seriousness of the accused’s threat was further enhanced by the fact that the threat was made in the police station itself infront all 3 police officers, namely ASP Mark Koh, SSSgt Lim and another police officer. It was an audacious act and should be viewed with utmost aversion. The intimidation was committed in a police station which suggests that the accused had a contemptuous disregard for lawful authorities. This may be another aggravating factor. 9. The Defence had painted the accused’s act as one committed in the heat of the moment. It was not committed at the scene of arrest. The accused had made the threat later when he was at the police station after he had been brought there. It is difficult to see how the threat can be said to have been uttered in the heat of the moment. Therefore the validity of this point raised as a mitigating factor is very much in doubt. 10. In assessing sentence, the court was aware that the accused did not have a clean criminal record. His record shows that between 1977 and 2000, he had been convicted of 8 offences. Seven of these were for gaming and traffic offences. They are clearly different in nature from the case at hand and as such do not carry any weight in terms of aggravation. The remaining previous conviction of the accused was for an offence of using criminal force to deter a public servant from discharge of his duty under section 353 of the Penal Code (Cap 224) for which he was fined $1,000. While the ingredients of an offence under S353 are different from those of the current offence, the factual matrix of the two cases has much in common can be said to belong to the same genre. Both the offences are for the use of criminal force or criminal intimation on a public servant. Thus the previous conviction being of a similar nature to the present one would be of relevance towards sentencing. Having said that, the court noted that this previous offence was committed about 20 years ago. It is an accepted principle of sentencing that the staleness of a previous conviction should be taken into account provided it was for a minor offence. While it may be true that the previous conviction under section 353 is “stale”, one can hardly say that the nature of the offence of using criminal force to deter a public servant from discharge of his duty is minor in character. After all, the law prescribed a term of imprisonment of up to 2 years or a fine or both. Therefore the previous conviction under section 353 as an aggravating factor remains relevant though its vintage and the fact that the sentence was a fine would mean that the weight to be attached to it by the court would be substantially lesser. 11. Having considered and weighed the mitigating and aggravating factors mentioned above carefully, the Court decided that it would be wholly inappropriate to impose a fine in the circumstances of the case. The accused was accordingly sentenced to 3 months imprisonment. 12. The accused is appealing against the sentence imposed.
