Pikamaster,
Well you should have phrased your questions clearly right from the
start then.
Legal fees vary from case to case and I am not sure if your
question relates to the prosecution or the defense. A defendant
like OJ Simpson obviously paid more for his homicide case compared
to a homeless charged with murdering a prostitute. The expenses
incurred by the UK government for investigating and prosecuting a
homicide is around a million pounds, according to figures released
on BBC recently.
As to the other questions, I agree with your apprehension. As I
said, I disagree with the process of convicting and executing a
prisoner on death row. We do need to reform the current
process:
1. The principle of 'innocent till proven guilty' is enshrined in
our legal system which we have inherted from the British but even
that is being challenged in these days of terrorist attacks. You
know, of course, that we have the ISA and UK has similar
legislation in Northern Ireland which allows for imprisonment
without trial. Back to Singapore, no one is executed till proven
guilty but yes, I agree there is a sublime pressure to rush through
the trial and appeal process. That is my concern too.
2. That problem is true everywhere. The world is not fair, I am
afraid. If another black person were charged with the same crime
under the same circumstances like OJ Simpson, would he be able to
hire the same defense team and would he be able to get away? I
doubt it.
3. I agree totally. That is what I said previously. We need to
reform our legal process to provide greater safeguards against a
miscarriage of justice.
4. I don't know what you mean. Nobody 'regulates' the success of
appeals. An appeal to the Court of appeal is automatic in capital
punishment cases and has to be based on point of law. If the
defense lawyer cannot give a good reason for the appeal, it fails.
I do not believe there is political interference with the decision
of the court in individual cases. And please don't put words in my
mouth. I observed the low rate of success at the appeal court but
certainly I have NEVER alleged that it is due to some manipulation
by the government.
I don't think you can fault the Appeal Court either. The problem is
that our adversarial system is rather biased towards the
prosecution in that all the forensic experts in the country appear
for the State. They are not allowed to share their evidence with
the defense until much later when the trial has started. As in the
Huang Na case, the lawyer cannot be present at the interrogation
and is not even allowed to see his client until the police has
extracted every piece of incriminating evidence. By the time the
case goes to trial, the accused has already admitted his guilt on
so many counts that all a lawyer can do often is just plead on
mitigating circumstances. The defense lawyer has the odds against
him and it is difficult to make a convincing argument at the trial
and subsequent appeal. So the Appeal Court rightly dismisses the
case so often.
Economics is not the reason for having the death sentence, although
it certainly features in the debate. As I see it, the reason it is
not the time to abolish capital punishment is mainly because our
population supports it, especially after a particularly heinous
crime like the dismembered body case. Instead I think we need to
reform our legal process to provide more safeguards. With more
safeguards against a wrongful conviction, however, it may mean that
we might let the occasional guilty go free because no legal process
is perfect.
At the end of the day we need to strike this balance: would you
rather let a guilty person go free or an innocent person be wrongly
convicted? That is a question Singaporeans must answer for
themselves and not by any foreign organizations.
