CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS AND CONVICTIONS (Figures)

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CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS AND CONVICTIONS

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(Figures): **

1.

Prof. Ivan Png Paak Liang asked the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Law in the last five years (a) how many criminal convictions in the District Courts, divided between commercial and other criminal cases, were appealed on points of law; (b) how many of these cases were successful; (c) what is the number of criminal prosecutions in the District Courts, divided between commercial and other criminal cases, where the defence applied for transfers to the High Court; and (d) how many of these cases were transfers approved by the High Court and on what grounds.

Prof. S Jayakumar: Prof. Png has asked for the number of criminal convictions, divided between commercial and other criminal cases, which were appealed on points of law and the success rate of such appeals.

I am afraid that records are not kept in a form that distinguishes between the grounds of appeal and between commercial and non-commercial cases. A total of 1,310 Magistrate's appeals were filed between the years 2001 to 2005. Of these, 67 were successful in that the sentence was reduced or the conviction set aside by the appeal court.

To compile the information by grounds of appeal and type of case, it will require a huge exercise to manually review all the case files to ascertain and subjectively classify the actual grounds of appeal and the nature of the case. Even then it is not reasonable for me to ask the Courts to embark on such an exercise.

Most appeals are based on mixed grounds of fact and law. Furthermore, there is also no clear cut definition of a "commercial" crime and the offences in our statutes are not readily classified as commercial or non-commercial. Some offenders may be charged with ordinary criminal offences even though the context is fully commercial, for example, the offence of cheating.

There is one case in the last five years where the defence applied for the case to be transferred from the District Courts to the High Court. The case involved two accused persons and an alleged breach of the Companies Act.

The application for a transfer of this case was successful. The judge who heard the case did not deliver a written judgment. I would add that the grounds for a transfer of a criminal case from the District Courts to the High Court are set out in the Criminal Procedure Code, and the judge would have found one or more of them to be applicable.