CRIMINAL PROCEDURE CODE (AMENDMENT) BILL

Resumption of debate on Question, "That the Bill be now read a Third time."

Question again proposed.

Mr Low Yong Nguan (Crawford): Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise in support of the Bill. Sir, with the passing of the Bill, we in this House will be happy with the enhancing of the Government's role in ensuring that fair and proper administration of justice is made applicable and available to all our citizens. It will also meet our citizens' demand that the administrative machinery should provide sufficient safeguards to protect their rights and liberty so that they can safely go about their business.

Sir, the Bill will also reduce the possibility of error in a trial where a man's life is at stake and ensure that in a murder trial both the accused and the murdered person will receive justice. The Minister has referred to the evidence in the Select Committee's Report when the Select Committee heard evidence from some ten members of the jury who had served in two recent trials. I am sure if Members go through the record of the Committee, they will see for themselves the things that happen in the jury room in Singapore. And I am sure they will join us in wishing to see this Bill passed as soon as possible so that a trial for a man's life is not reduced to a game of chance. Sir, we have to ensure that justice is done to an accused person on the basis of whether or not he has actually committed the offence, and not whether he is able to engage a good lawyer. There was a suggestion to raise the academic qualification or the standard of English of our juries as a solution to the problem, But I doubt if this will really help. We have had a special juror who was a professional man trained overseas and yet who fumbled over the terms commonly used in a murder trial. It is a matter of attitude. It is a matter of understanding the fact that at times there are certain unpleasant things in life we just have to do. That really is the crux of the problem.

Sir, I beg leave of the House to refer to the submission of a local journalist and also, as pointed out by the Minister, that of the Deputy Registrar of the High Court. Both of them have intimate knowledge of the working of the jury system, and both of them were convinced that the jury system must go. But, of course, we cannot prevent frustrated politicians who have been left way behind by the progress of time from attempting to make political capital out of such an issue. I really do not see the wisdom of such a move. One can accuse the Government of preparing the way for total dictatorship or totalitarianism, but one will soon bite one's tongue when one is permitted to hold a public rally in Fullerton Square on the issue over which the accusation was made. It will be better if everyone will sincerely search his own conscience and ask himself if the jury system has really worked well in Singapore.

I wish to conclude by expressing my full confidence in the Bill as reported by the Select Committee. I have no reservation at all in supporting the Government on this issue. Some people have been insinuating that we Parliamentarians will not oppose the Bill for fear of being expelled and, therefore, losing our seats. Let me take this opportunity to make it clear to everyone concerned that we, as representatives of the people, will support the Bill or, for that matter, any other Bill worthy of support, because we realise that we are good enough to administer our affairs, and, therefore, we are bold enough to face the facts and have the courage of our convictions. In this case, Sir, the fact is that the jury system has been proved to be unworkable in Singapore and we have the courage to say so and to vote for scrapping it.

Sir, I beg to support the motion.

5.01 p.m.

Mr N. Govindasamy: Mr Speaker, Sir, you may recall that I rose to speak against the Bill on its Second Reading. As a layman, I had certain misgivings and I raised two relevant points to substantiate my objection. The two issues I raised, if I may quote, are as follows:

(i) 'Singapore can ill afford the luxury of having three Judges to be fully occupied with one trial;' and

(ii) I objected to clause 3 of the Bill which sought to amend Chapter 21, section 178 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

Sir, in support of the second point, I also said:

'If three learned Judges cannot arrive at a decision, then I suggest that some doubts have been raised and I feel the case deserves an acquittal, and not another trial before another court, consisting of three Judges of the High Court other than those who had tried him previously.'

Sir, the amendments to the Bill as contained in the Report of the Select Committee have, in my view, taken care of the objections that I raised then, instead of the luxury of having three Judges trying one case, now we have the bare necessity of two Judges sitting in one case at a time. In fact, a member of a legal firm which almost exclusively deals with criminal cases has advocated in his written memorandum trial by two Judges instead of three. My objections to clause 3 of the Bill which sought to amend Chapter 21, section 178, have also been met. The Bill as amended now reads as follows:

'Where the two Judges fail to reach an unanimous decision as to the guilt of an accused charged with an offence in respect of which punishment of death is authorised by law, he shall not he convicted of that offence but may, if the two Judges agree, be convicted of any lesser offence of which he could have been charged based on the same facts:

Provided that where the failure to reach an unanimous decision as to the guilt of the accused rests on the ground that one of the two Judges has acquitted him by reason of the provisions of section 362 of this Code, then the accused shall not be convicted of the offence with which he has been charged but shall be dealt with in accordance with the provisions of section 363 of this Code.'

In other words, if the two Judges do not unanimously agree on the guilt of the accused, the accused has to be acquitted. With this new amendment, no accused person will be tried twice for the same offence or placed in peril of his life twice as originally proposed in the Bill .

Sir, as I have said earlier, the Report o the Select Committee has taken care of both the objections which I raised during the Second Reading of this Bill.

Sir, I had the privilege of being a Member of the Select Committee which considered the Bill. After hearing the views expressed by the various persons who gave oral evidence before the Select Committee and reading the representations submitted, I am thoroughly convinced that jury trials are not workable in Singapore. Sir, we also heard oral evidence from some persons who had sat as jurors. We heard that in one case involving special jurors, who were supposed to possess high educational qualifications, the foreman declared the verdict to be unanimous, as the Minister pointed out earlier, when in actual fact there was not even a majority decision. One juror claimed that the accused person should have been acquitted on the grounds of self-defence when neither the prosecution nor the defence ever raised the issue of self-defence, as there was no question of self-defence at all. Another juror admitted that he did not pay much attention to the case.

Sir, the language used in our courts is English. We had a special juror who was classified as a special juror because of his educational qualifications and yet who pronounced the word "unanimous" as "universe" and "culpable homicide" which sounded like "cumable suicide". Sir, in the case where the foreman wrongly announced the verdict to the Judge, his fellow jurors did not have any qualms about it but happily went home without attempting to draw the court's attention to the foreman's mistake.

One foreman said he was trembling, sweating and was nervous on the day the trial ended. In reply to a question whether he and his fellow jurors were able to follow the evidence, he said about one or two or maybe three did not seem to be able to follow the case properly. A leading criminal lawyer, who also gave oral evidence after hearing the recorded testimony by the jurors, freely confessed that, "I recognise that three out of the seven jurors I heard did not strike me as having the quality for responsible judgment." Sir, if amongst the seven jurors, three did not follow the case properly, I submit it is not worth having jury trials. We were also told by people who had been jurors that one man amongst the jurors can sway the decision of other jurors.

Sir, one juror who was so influenced perhaps by the Perry Mason series in our T.V. programmes said that in the case where he was a juror, if it had been tried in an American court the accused would have been acquitted if he had a good lawyer. And this was the very same juror who had voted for a verdict of not guilty. But when he found that there was a tie in the voting, he immediately said to the foreman, "Can I just change my verdict to "Manslaughter"?" Sir, he was convinced the man was not guilty, but on finding that there was a tie in the voting, he immediately decided to vote for a verdict of guilty. The foreman in that case said the juror had changed his mind immediately and the juror himself admitted that it took him about three minutes to change his mind. On his own admission, within three minutes, he had changed his mind from letting a man free to sending him to gaol.

Another juror, though she knew that the foreman was going to announce a verdict different from that arrived at by the jurors, disclaimed her responsibility by justifying in her own words:"..if we continued arguing, it would never end." One juror, when asked for her reaction when she heard the incorrect verdict conveyed to the Judge, said, "I think we had done our duty. We had cast our vote and that is that." Sir, an incorrect verdict had been given and this juror maintained that she had done her duty.

Sir, in that particular case, as the Minister pointed out earlier, the verdict reached was four in favour of culpable homicide and three in favour of guilty of first-degree murder. Sir, you are aware, and as the Minister pointed out earlier, that we need at least a five to two majority to call it a majority decision. The foreman announced that there was an unanimous verdict for culpable homicide and the accused was accordingly sentenced to imprisonment. The interesting point is, we may ask ourselves, what if the voting had taken place differently? If four had voted for murder and three had voted for culpable homicide and if the foreman had announced that there was a verdict of guilty of murder, then the accused would have been sent to the gallows. A grave and irreparable act of injustice would have been done.

Another member of the legal profession, who represented the Council of the Singapore Advocates and Solicitors Society, after having heard the recorded testimony of seven jurors, also freely confessed:

'After hearing the tape and reading the transcript that was handed to us, I find the context of the transcript very shocking. Never had I imagined that this was the level of the so-called richer experience and understanding that the juries are being credited with. If this is representative of the whole of the jury system, then I say, Sir, that the jury system is not working at all.'

Sir, after having the benefit of hearing some jurors and having read the written representations from members of the legal profession as well as others, I have no doubt whatsoever that the jury system has not worked and will not work properly in Singapore. In fact, a member of the legal profession in his written submission admitted that if he had committed a crime, he would rather have a jury try his case in the hope that his counsel would either confuse the jurors sufficiently so as to cause them to disagree among themselves, or succeed in setting off an emotional chain reaction by appealing to their pity or sympathy irrespective of the justice of the case. On the other hand, he said, if he were not guilty, he would choose a Judge because, through his experience and training, he would have a greater ability to discern the truth. Sir, I cannot agree with him more after having heard how our, jury system actually functions in practice. The pertinent question to be decided by us is whether jury trial or the abolition of jury trial serves to promote the interest and ideals of justice in actual practice. I am inclined to vote for the second choice and I, therefore, rise in support of the Bill as amended in accordance with the Report of the Select Committee.

5.14 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Mr L. P. Rodrigo): Mr Speaker, Sir, in its passage through the Select Committee, this Bill was put to close examination by the representatives of the Council of the Singapore Advocates and Solicitors Society. In the light of the proceedings of the Committee, a number of the suggestions of the Bar Council have been, in fact, incorporated in the notices of amendments to the Bill and filed by the Minister for Law. The end result of this deliberation, Sir, is the modification of certain basic provisions of the Bill. Two Judges would try an offence in respect of which the penalty of death is authorised by law - a presiding Judge and one other. The decision of the court as to the guilt of the accused in respect of such a charge would be arrived at unanimously. Failure to have such unanimity would bar conviction on the charge but would allow a conviction on a lesser offence and only if the two Judges agree that the facts justify such a conviction. All interlocutory questions would be determined by the presiding Judge.

Surely, Sir, it cannot be doubted that these suggestions have been received in the spirit of wanting to make the system work efficiently and effectively, and the purport of the Bill cannot be imputed to be otherwise. Sir, that the jury system has not been working as expected, I think, has apparently the agreement of the members of the Bar Council. This turn of mind came after their members became informed of the deficiencies and errors of the jury system by the jurors themselves in Select Committee.

In the case referred to by the Minister, the foreman of the jury gave vent to an expression of acute dissatisfaction with the system. This dissatisfaction presumably surfaced because of the Bill and the existence of a Select Committee on the Bill which provided a much-awaited opportunity for a change of the system, the efficacy of which this juror, at least, had grave doubts. Sir, this is a disclosure which has come in the 143rd year of the practice of the jury system in our country. The lucid details given by the Member for Telok Blangah opposite are sufficient to cause a disturbing disillusionment about the efficacy of the system to which we have subscribed for all these years.

Sir, would not our conscience be assailed by the vision of more shocking errors and inability of our jurors in the trials which they have hitherto determined in the course of those 143 years? Are we to gloss over these very disconcerting disclosures with the argument that there is always scope for improving the quality of our jurors, and that we should retain lay participation in criminal adjudication in our system, or that our Judges would be progressively incompetent to decide on questions of fact as they would be removed from the experiences of the common man? This last argument, as far as I am concerned, Sir, appears to imply that our Judges would lose their memory of all social and cultural experiences with the common man immediately upon their appointment as Judges of the High Court. Besides, how removed can any Judge be from the realities of life and from his physical experiences in a society as compact and as exposed to mass media as ours?

Sir, I think the urgency of the moment is to prevent a repetition of the kind of grave errors that the Member for Telok Blangah has undertaken to inform this House, particularly the kind that the foreman of the jury in one case had committed. This foreman undoubtedly had wrestled with his conscience and finally confided to the Deputy Registrar of the High Court that he had made a serious mistake. But what is more important still is the urgent need to ensure that in the last analysis, whatever the system is, justice is in fact done, and as far as I am concerned, even if it is not as lucidly seen to be done as is desired.

[Mr Deputy Speaker in the Chair]

5.20 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Mr L. P. Rodrigo): Up to the time that the Select Committee on the Bill first met, I had been persuaded to vote for the abolition of the jury system by my own brief experience of the system, directly or vicariously, and my belief in its unworkability. Having sat in Select Committee on the Bill, the disclosures in the Report which are for everyone to read, merely confirms my conviction that the system as we have it today is not workable.

5.22 p.m.

Mr P. Selvadurai (Bukit Panjang): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, nothing that has transpired since the Second Reading of this Bill has moved me to revise my original stand that the removal of the jury system from our machinery of justice would result in fairer, truer and more just criminal trials. It is essential to our system of administration of justice that justice be meted out in our courts of law in accordance with law, explicit written law, by men of integrity trained for the purpose, and there can, in this scheme of things, be no place for the intrusion, in the shape of the jury, of elements of prejudice or subjective, emotional, irrational notions of what justice should constitute. In fact, we have sad modern evidence of the nature of trial by popular prejudice in the people's courts of totalitarian states where popular justice as against justice in accordance with law has taken its ultimate horrendous form.

In removing the jury, we remove the final survival of this element from our system and I would indeed venture to state that the step we take today is logical in the context of the rational drive against the jury that is taking place, no doubt circuitously, in other democratic states where the rule of law operates. I might here add that the state of Israel does not have jury trials, and I am sure that not even our eminent jurist, who recently charged at Fullerton Square that the last nail was being driven into the coffin of our basic freedoms, would seriously contend that Israel was a totalitarian state that had destroyed the one thread in the history of the individual's struggle for freedom,

The Fullerton Square oration as reported in the Straits Times of Wednesday, 17th December, 1969, while it showed elements of Messianic prophecy, was alien to the modern critical temper and was so unhistorical that it made one sad to think that an otherwise brilliant legal mind was unable to face and accept facts as they were. If the proper lessons were drawn from history, the categorical assertion that the jury was an obstruction to the exercise of absolute power by the executive of the Government could not have been made. This proposition has never been true in Singapore and a study of the treason trials in England would show that it was also not true in England.

There is the gravest danger in seeking to run the affairs of state on the basis of pretence. Having misled oneself, one goes on to mislead and confuse the people. For is it really true and tenable, in the light of experience, to assert, without qualification, that the historical reason for the jury in criminal trials, and its major attraction in democratic countries, is that it interposes a group of anonymous persons between the government and the citizens in the administration of criminal justice? That because of its very anonymity, the jury sieves out personal whims and animosities of the Government and provides the best system known of impartial justice? That that is why no jury survives in a totalitarian state?

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, is this hallucination or hard historical fact? Does a jury anywhere in the world really live up to the extravagantly romantic claims made on its behalf by its publicists?

Inevitably, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I must support this Bill.

5.26 p.m.

Inche Mohd. Ghazali Bin Ismail (Aljunied): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, having been on the Select Committee on the Bill and having had the privilege of listening to all the evidence given by interested parties, I was amazed at the defects in the administration of justice should the existing jury system be retained in Singapore. So many factors arise from the nature and set-up of our society, partly because of the educational and intelligence aspects, and partly because of the multi-racial content of our community where each member of a particular community carries along his superstitious and traditional beliefs into his practical life, that the jury system seems to be inadequate in ensuring that justice is done in trials of capital offences in Singapore.

A pregnant juror, for instance, may not vote for a verdict of guilty if she knows that that will send the accused to the gallows for fear that something would happen to her unborn child. However, the fact that almost everyone in Singapore, except those with special professional and political interests who think in terms of either commercial or political interests instead of the interest of justice, has not voiced any objection to the abolition of this un-Asian system, I presume, means that the people are all behind the Government to see that this system is scrapped once and for all,

Many lawyers agree that the standard of our jurors has gone down because many jurors do not have a sufficient standard of education to enable them to possess enough intelligence to mete out justice adequately. Quite a number of them are not so conversant with the use of the English language. As has already been mentioned by the Member for Telok Blangah just now, one juror, for instance, who appeared before the Select Committee could not understand what "culpable homicide" means. He even pronounced it as "cumable suicide" instead of "culpable homicide", and this happened to many others who served as jurors because of lack of education or lack of English.

This is the very system that Mr David Marshall fought so hard to prevent its abolition. He tried to tell the people that men of the "cumable suicide" type could offer better justice than the Judges themselves. Of course, we know why he prefers the jury to stay. After all, under that very system, he has got acquittals in many murder trials to his credit. He was also so angry with the Bill that he not only attacked the Government at his luncheon speech on Wednesday last, but also in the same rally he attacked the press for not publishing his previous criticisms on the Bill, He alleged that the press did this out of fear of the Government. If the press did not really give ample publicity to his grumbling about the issue, it was probably because they knew that his grumbling was more of a political nature motivated by self-interest than professional.

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, my profession is journalism and, like many other journalists, we feel hurt when someone who is a non-journalist like Mr Marshall tells us what to do in respect of assessing news value. I would ask that the journalists be left alone. They know how to go about their work. Similarly, no journalist will tell Mr Marshall how he should conduct his client's defence to win his case in court.

Quite a number of journalists, including many who have been court reporters for years, have told me that they are in favour of abolishing the jury system. Therefore, for Mr Marshall to say that there are only one or two men in Singapore who really want to abolish the jury system is not correct.

5.33 p.m.

Mr Ho See Beng: Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, after having read the Select Committee's Report, I think I am more than convinced that the system of trial by jury is not workable, particularly in our multi-racial and multi-lingual society. But that does not mean that we should not allow opponents to the Bill to disagree with us. Let me put it this way. If we had planted a tree straight, we need not worry about the moon shadow that it reflects, even if the shadow were a little bit bent. So why should we worry that so-and-so, an opponent of the Bill, held a rally in Fullerton Square?

Whether the system is workable or not depends on the attitude of man. And I also say that even if we had a wonderful system but the attitude of that man was hostile to the system, he would say, "No, no, this is rubbish." So we should not worry about that.

Here I would like to recall what the author of My Country and My People, Dr Lin Yu-Tang, said. He said that some people even regard the moon as more beautiful if you look at it from the West. If you have men with this attitude, whatever you do, they will say that it is wrong. So I think it is good for the Prime Minister to tell Mr Marshall, "Go ahead and hold a rally in Fullerton Square." I find there is nothing wrong in that.

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

5.35 p.m.

Mr Ho See Beng: Mr Marshall, or any opponent of this Bill, can say that the P.A.P. is undemocratic. To this, I say, "Let such people accuse us of being a little bit undemocratic. But nobody can accuse us of not being pragmatic."

Mr Speaker, Sir, I share the feelings of the other Members of this House on this Bill.

5.36 p.m.

Mr E. W. Barker: Mr Speaker, Sir, with the support given by nearly all the voices heard today, except one, I need hardly wind up. The Member for Telok Blangah previously did criticise the Bill, but we put him on the Select Committee. Since then he has changed his mind. It is a pity that we did not put his namesake from Anson on the Select Committee. We might have been able to make him change his mind; I do not know. But whatever it is, I do not think it can be said of him that he is not a man of courage. Certainly he is not afraid to air his views in this House.

I do not propose to join issue with him here today except to correct one misapprehension that he is under, which is this. He did say that one of the reasons given by Government for introducing this Bill is that the jury takes too much time. I have never given this as a reason. But I would agree with him that where a man's life is at stake, it is not important for us to insist that time is of the essence. When a man's life is at stake, the trial should take as long as is required.

Sir, I have nothing further to add in view of the other speeches made in this House.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Third time and passed.

Mr Speaker: Order. Pursuant to the resolution made earlier today, Parliament now stands adjourned, and will sit again tomorrow.

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-two minutes to Six o'clock p.m.