Latest: Singapore single mother awaits death row in Malaysia for drug trafficking. On the pretext of a business trip to China, Iqah was handed a suitcase containing heroin arranged by her Nigerian boyfriend and was arrested by Malaysian Immigration. A campaign is underway to raise funds for the appeal. To find out more, read

We have also heard that since Vui Kong's appeal started, there has been an unofficial stay of execution for all prisoners on death row in Changi Prison, pending the decision of the court on Yong's case. As the case has been dismissed by the Court of Appeal, we anticipate a Changi gallows bloodbath in a scale not seen since the Pulau Senang uprising in 1965 when 18 men were convicted of murder and hanged in a single Friday morning.

Singapore, which routinely persecute dissenters and critics, continue to hang young drug runners while at the same time work closely with Burmese military generals, and has invested billions in business ties with Burma, one of the biggest heroin manufacturing countries the world.

-----------------------------

If you know someone who's charged in a capital case, received the death sentence, or is on death row in Singapore and if you have have your side of the story to tell, contact us at sgdeathpenalty [at] gmail.com


Friday, September 10, 2010

Duo saved from the gallows

SINGAPORE - The Court of Appeal clarified yesterday the scope of a criminal law provision enacted 138 years ago. And the court's interpretation of the meaning of common intention has saved the lives of two men headed for the gallows.

Daniel Vijay Katherasan and Christopher Samson Anpalagan, both 27, had been convicted of murder. But a 128-page written judgment from the highest court in the land has now found them guilty of robbery with hurt.

They were in a group of three who had robbed a lorry loaded with 2,700 mobile phones, worth $1.3 million, in May 2006. During the robbery along Changi Coast Road, Nakamuthu Balakrishnan, 51, bashed the lorry driver, Mr Wan Cheon Kem, with a baseball bat.

The Appellate Court ruled that Katherasan and Anpalagan shared no common intention with Balakrishnan to kill Mr Wan, nor did the duo intend to knock the latter unconscious.

While they knew violence would be necessary to carry out the robbery, Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong, who delivered the judgment, said knowledge was not the same as intention.

"In short, there was no finding of a common intention among the Appellants to cause Wan's death or inflict any specific injury on Wan," he wrote.

In setting out a non-exhaustive list of various scenarios, the Court explained that an offender can only be said to have committed a crime with common intention if he had the same intention to commit the act done by the actual perpetrator.

Where murder is concerned, the Court ruled there must be a common intention to cause, specifically, an injury leading to the offence.

Katherasan and Anpalagan will be sentenced at a later date. 

The duo face a jail term of between five and 20 years and at least 12 strokes of the cane.


http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC100910-0000100/Duo-saved-from-the-gallows

1 comment: