SINGAPORE: The lawyer of a church pastor, who was
sentenced to two weeks in jail for giving false information under
the Customs Act, on Thursday questioned if a "blanket sentence" had
been imposed "mechanically and religiously".
In the appeal against the sentence, lawyer Peter Ong
said Senior District Judge See Kee Oon had "failed to consider"
that he had the discretion to impose a fine, instead of a custodial
sentence.
The judge had imposed a jail term on Steven Yang
Suan Piau, a pastor at Eternal Life Baptist Church, after he lied
to an immigration officer.
On Jan 3, Yang had attempted to leave Singapore for Malaysia
without the required amount of fuel, or at least three-quarters of
the tank, in his car.
When asked by the immigration officer, Yang maintained that his
car's fuel indicator - which showed it was three-quarters full -
was accurate and that the fuel gauge had not been tampered
with.
However, an inspection of the car found it had less than
one-quarter tank of fuel.
On Thursday, Mr Ong questioned if the Senior District Judge had
placed previous sentencing precedents "on an altar and obsessively
worshipped them".
In 64 of the 67 cases between 2009 and May this year, jail terms of
at least one to two weeks were imposed.
Two other cases attracted fines, while the last was taken into
consideration during sentencing for other offences, Mr Ong
noted.
The penalty for giving false information under the Customs Act is a
fine of up to S$5,000 or jail term of up to a year, or both, and Mr
Ong argued Parliament did not prescribe a minimum sentence for the
offence and had left it to the discretion of the courts.
The lawyer also drew similarities to the recent case of Woffles Wu,
who was fined S$1,000 for giving false information to the police
about his speeding offences.
In both cases, the false information given was to evade a small
speeding fine or a "small amount of excise duty on petrol", said Mr
Ong.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Sarah Lam, however, said Yang's sentence
was adequate as he had deliberately misled the immigration
officer.
The appeal was adjourned to a further date. - TODAY