Close | Public Prosecutor v Logan s/o Palani Manickam [2010] SGDC 17 |
| DAC 31347/2009, MA 3/2010 | |
| 14 Jan 2010 | |
| District Court | |
| Lim Wee Ming | |
| Insp Thulesiram and Asp Zainal Abidin for the prosecution, Peter Fernando for the accused |
Judgment
14 January 2010 District Judge Lim Wee Ming: The accused, Logan s/o Palani Manickam, was at the end of a trial, found guilty and convicted of a charge under section 420 of the Penal Code (Cap. 224). The charge was for cheating one Md Azizur Rahman Md Mojibur Rahman (“the victim”) by deceiving him into believing that the accused had a contract to recruit Indian foreign workers to work in Singapore, which fact the accused knew to be false, and that the accused was appointing the victim to recruit workers for the accused and by such manner of deception, the accused dishonestly induced the victim to deliver the amount of $2,500 to the accused. I sentenced the accused to 2 weeks’ imprisonment. The accused has appealed against sentence and is on bail pending the appeal. There is no appeal against conviction. The Facts 2. The accused had entered into a deed dated 24 May 2004 (“the Deed”) with the victim. Clause 1 of the Deed provides that: “The [accused] has contracted with one Retnam Kumar to recruit for and on his behalf Fifteen (15) Indian foreign workers to be employed as general workers in Singapore (“the contract”)”. 3. Clause 9 of the Deed provides, inter alia, that: “The [victim] and the [accused] SHALL EACH DEPOSIT Singapore Dollars Ten Thousand only ($10,000.00) only to RETNAM KUMAR … upon signing this deed.” 4. Pursuant to clause 9 of the Deed, part of the deposit in the sum of $2,500 was paid by the victim to the accused. 5. It was subsequently discovered that there was no such contract as set out in clause 1 of the Deed. The victim had been deceived into paying the sum of $2,500 to the accused. Sentence 6. I sentenced the accused to 2 weeks’ imprisonment. This was well below the usual benchmark for a charge under section 420 of the Penal Code taking into consideration the amount involved. In deciding on 2 weeks’ imprisonment, I took into consideration defence counsel’s submission that the offence was committed 5 years’ ago and that there was substantial delay in prosecuting the matter. I also took into consideration that full restitution of the sum of $2,500 had been made to the victim. 7. Defence counsel relied on the case of Wuu David v Public Prosecutor “As regards the principle of general deterrence, I should add that where one-off offenders such as the Appellant are concerned, prosecution for the offence(s) committed will in itself provide some form of deterrence in most cases. As stated in Andrew Ashworth, Sentencing and Criminal Justice (Cambridge University Press, 4th Ed, 2005) at p 79: Sentences are not the only form of general deterrent flowing from the criminal justice system. In some cases it is the process that is the punishment – being prosecuted, appearing in court, receiving publicity in the local newspaper – rather than the sentence itself. In some cases the shame and embarrassment in relation to family and friends are said to have a more powerful effect than the sentence itself. [emphasis added]” 8. Defence counsel relied on the above extract and submitted that his client had been deeply embarrassed by the charge against him which had been reported in the newspapers. He submitted that a fine be imposed together with a nominal custodial sentence of one day’s imprisonment. 9. I was of the view that the argument that “In some cases it is the process that is the punishment” (my emphasis in bold) would only apply in exceptional cases rather than in every single case, particularly where the charge is for a serious offence. The circumstances in this case were quite different from that in Wuu David’s case which involved rather exceptional circumstances. In Wuu David, the accused had used a credit card which he had stolen at a bar to purchase a bottle of liquor. The offence was committed in the spur of the moment and the card was only used one off and was thrown away after it was used. 10. The present case clearly did not involve an offence which was committed in the spur of the moment. The fact that the accused had prepared the Deed which detailed the contract which he purportedly had with Mr Retnam Kumar, which turned out to be a fabrication, clearly showed advanced planning on the part of the accused. Furthermore, the sum involved was much larger than in Wuu David’s case and the present charge was a more serious charge under section 420 of the Penal Code rather than section 417. 11. Defence counsel argued that the accused would lose his job even if 1 week’s imprisonment was imposed. For an offence of this nature where the benchmark is a substantive custodial sentence, the fact that an accused person would lose his job would not justify a fine coupled with a nominal custodial sentence of one day’s imprisonment, save in unusually exceptional circumstances. I was of the view that there were no unusually exceptional circumstances in this case that would justify only a nominal imprisonment term coupled with a fine. 12. In the premises, I was of the view that 2 weeks’ imprisonment was appropriate and sentenced the accused accordingly.
