2. Managing Mens Rea in Singapore - Singapore Academy of Law

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18 SAcLJ 314 Managing Mens Rea in Singapore 323s 300(c). 26The earlier cases, and Yasin itself, had pretended that it wasbusiness as usual. Lim Poh Lye has its difficulties. The failure to mentionYasin might have been understandable, given the Court of Appeal’sdeclared distaste for it, but the reliance on Tan Chee Hwee is technicallymisplaced. In that case, what started off as theft turned disastrous whenthe maid of the house returned unexpectedly and surprised the accusedand his confederates. In the ensuing struggle, the maid was strangled todeath by the cord of an electric iron wound round her neck. The accusedwas acquitted because the Court had made a finding of fact that theaccused persons had only intended to tie her up (around the torso) withthe cord, but in the course of the struggle, the cord had accidentallyslipped off the torso and onto her neck: 27In the circumstances we are driven to the conclusion that the injurywhich was in fact caused to the maid around her neck, in all probability,was not intentionally but accidentally or unintentionally caused.[emphasis added]17 Thus, so the court found, while injuries to her torso might havebeen intended, those “around her neck” were not. The enterprise whichthe accused persons had embarked upon, ie, tying the victim up aroundthe torso, would not have resulted in death. The factual situation wasmaterially dissimilar, and would have been analogous only if the court inTan Chee Hwee had found that the accused persons intended to wind thecord round the victim’s neck, but had not intended anything more thanto silence her. There were conflicting statements given to the police aboutwhether the accused persons had intended to wind the cord round thevictim’s neck, and in the circumstances the Court of Appeal had given the26 To be fair, the earlier decision of the High Court in PP v Sundarti Supriyanto [2004]4 SLR 622 had adopted the views of Prof Stanley Yeo in “Academic Contributionsand Judicial Interpretations of Section 300(c) Murder” Singapore Law Gazette (April2004), p 21, in characterising the predominant judicial approach as “very muchobjective” and describing it as follows, at [129]:[E]ven if an accused intended to inflict only a minor injury, it was sufficient toresult in a conviction for murder so long as the injury actually inflicted wassufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death. [emphasis in original]This analysis accuses the court of ignoring the difference between intended injuryand actual injury, and declares that this is not faithful to Virsa Singh, which requireda precise correspondence between intended and actual injury. Although this thesisstems from the genuine feeling that something is amiss with s 300(c), I do not thinkthat the court has ever denied that there must be a certain degree of correspondencebetween the intended and actual injury. As I have argued, that there need not beabsolute correspondence is expressed in Virsa Singh itself. The real dispute has notbeen with respect to whether or not there should or should not be correspondence,but with the degree of correspondence that would suffice.27 Supra n 24, at 668, [46].
324Singapore Academy of Law Journal (2006)accused persons the benefit of the doubt. 28 The true ancestor of Lim PohLye is not Tan Chee Hwee, but Yasin, which has never been overruled.18 It is also unfortunate that Lim Poh Lye formulates the position inthe form of rule and exception – Virsa Singh is the rule, Tan Chee Hweethe exception. The danger is that this assumes that Tan Chee Hwee isinconsistent with Virsa Singh (otherwise an exception would not beneeded), and this invites future courts to find fault with it. It would havebeen safer to explain the situation as being the result of the inherentuncertainty embodied in s 300(c) itself, for the section does not say withwhat particularity the fatal injury must have been intended. Neither is therule or the exception, but both are faithful to s 300(c).19 That said, Lim Poh Lye does not explain why a “non-fatalpurpose” should ameliorate the “accidental specific injury”. Nor does itexplain why the amelioration should not operate if the intended injuryhad been to a “vulnerable or sensitive region of the body”. Again, theunexpressed rationale must be the instinct that it does matter whether theaccused had contemplated death when he or she acted. Thus, where thereis a non-fatal purpose, the likelihood of death being contemplated issmall – the “exception” should apply to relieve the accused of murder.Where the intended injury is to a vulnerable part of the body, it is likelythat death was either intended or known to be the result. Lim Poh Lyegoes too far if it implies that these are hard and fast rules – a non-fatalpurpose is not necessarily inconsistent with knowledge of lethality,neither is an intended injury to a vulnerable part of the body dispositiveof such knowledge. Yet one can readily sympathise with the judge in LimPoh Lye for not being explicit – this is the very inquiry which all theauthorities say is not to be embarked upon.20 This then is the core of the problem. Section 300(c)’s only reasonfor existence is that it does not have intention or knowledge of death asan element. Yet generations of judges from Yasin to Lim Poh Lye have, atleast occasionally, balked at the idea that someone who acted without theknowledge that death would result should be convicted of murder, andwithout exception be punished with death. When they have been so28 There was indeed evidence in the form of a police statement that the accusedintended the wire to “go round her neck” (supra n 24, at 667, [41]), but the courtwas unwilling to accept the truth of that assertion, given the existence of severalother statements which were rather less clear about what exactly was intended. Itcould be argued that this factual finding was wrong, and perhaps distorted by theconsequence of the alternative finding, but that was not the course of the judgment.
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