Kallang body parts muder case (Appeal dismissed)

On 22-5-2006, I have blogged the Singapore case of PP v Leong Siew Chor (also known as Kallang body parts murder case) . Leong Siew Chor was convicted for the murder of his girlfriend and sentenced to death by the High Court.

He filed an appeal against the conviction in the Court of Appeal.

The basis for the appeal was that the trial judge erred in admitting the cautioned statement.

The accused has made the cautioned statement on the ninth day after he was arrested. The accused was only granted the right to counsel on 20th day.

The argument by the defence counsel is that once an application was made to the subordinate court (on the seventh day) , then any further denial of a right to counsel would be unreasonable.

On 6-10-2006, the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal.
The ground of the decision:
"It is not enough merely to say that this accused was denied access to counsel on the grounds given in this case. Counsel was inviting this court to make an important ruling on a constitutional point without sufficient material in law and evidence to sustain any cogent question of law. It may be that the police ought not deny a right to counsel in the narrow form of receiving advice on the right to remain silent, to the broadest form possible, but this is not the case to advance any such argument. It is too thinly supported on the facts; this is not the right case for the points of law alluded to."

It is a settled law in both Malaysia and Singapore that the right to counsel is not an immediate one but one that would be granted within a reasonable time after the accused is arrested.

Jasbir Singh v PP [1994] 2 SLR 18 and Lee Mau Seng v Minister for Home Affairs, Singapore [1969–1971] SLR 508 are the cases cited by the Public Prosecutor.

What amount to reasonable time is a question of fact. Case in point is Mohd Ezam (Federal Court), an ISA case.

Breakdown of lawyers by etnic groups

A few CLP (Certificate in Legal Practice) candidates wrote to The Star and NST complaining about the low passing rate of the exam and ask for more transparency.

• Be more transparent over CLP exam (The Star)
• Why are so many failing (NST)
• Low passing rate dishearthening (NST)

In a separate note, I came across the statistics on the breakdown of lawyers by etnic groups. The order of the data is Bumiputra, Chinese, Indian.

Year 2000: 3118 , 3861, 2588

Year 2005: 4465, 4354, 2834

I will leave it to you to make your own interpretation and judgement.

I am reading the book "Affirmative Action Around the World" by Thomas Sowell. I will blog it later.