Wikipedia

Chan Seng Onn

Chan Seng Onn (simplified Chinese: 陈成安; traditional Chinese: 陳成安; born 4 January 1954) is a Singaporean judge. Formerly a prosecutor, Chan has served as a High Court judge since 2 July 2007.[1][2][3]

Chan Seng Onn
陈成安/陳成安
Judge of the High Court of Singapore
Assumed office
2 July 2007
Solicitor-General of Singapore
In office
2001–2007
Personal details
Born (1954-01-04) 4 January 1954 (age 70)
Singapore

Early life and education edit

Chan Seng Onn was born in Singapore on 4 January 1954 as the youngest of three children, with two sisters. His mother was a housewife and his father worked as a sewage pump attendant. He studied at St Anthony's Boys' School and then St Joseph's Institution (SJI) where he did his GCE O-Level and A-Level exams.[4] He was a top student alongside future politicians Teo Chee Hean and George Yeo at SJI.[5]

As a President's and Colombo Plan scholar, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in engineering from University College London in 1976.[3] He received a master's degree in industrial engineering from National University of Singapore (NUS) in 1981, and a Diploma in Business Administration from NUS. He received his Bachelor of Laws from NUS in 1986 and Master of Laws from University of Cambridge in 1987.[2]

Legal career edit

Prosecutor edit

In 1987, he joined the Singapore Legal Service as State Counsel and Deputy Public Prosecutor in the Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC). He was appointed Senior Assistant Registrar to the Supreme Court in 1991. In 1994, he returned to AGC in the role of Senior State Counsel.

During his tenure as a prosecutor, one of the cases prosecuted by Chan was that of Ng Theng Shuang, one of the two Malaysian armed robbers involved in the South Bridge Road shootout after their failed goldsmith robbery attempt. Ng managed to escape to Malaysia, where he was caught a year later, while the accomplice Lee Kok Chin was killed by Cisco officer Karamjit Singh, who was shot twice in his leg by Ng. Ng was brought to trial in Singapore's High Court for illegally discharging a firearm, and Chan successfully sought a guilty verdict and death sentence for Ng due to the evidence of Ng's fingerprints at the scene of crime and testimony of witnesses who knew about Ng's involvement in the crime, which refuted Ng's claims of an alibi. Ng lost his appeal against the death sentence and he was hanged on 14 July 1995[6][7]

Tenure as judicial commissioner edit

On 15 October 1997, he was appointed Judicial Commissioner.[2]

In August 1998, as Judicial Commissioner, Chan was the presiding judge of the trial of Too Yin Sheong, one of the three Malaysians accused of the brutal robbery-murder of Lee Kok Cheong, an associate professor of National University of Singapore, in December 1993. Too, who was arrested four years after the murder, stated he never strangled the professor and testified that it was one of the accomplices who did the killing, but Chan found that Too was a "cold-blooded" murderer who never stepped in to stop his accomplice from strangling the victim to death, and even remorselessly stole Lee's ATM card to make unauthorized withdrawals of money to spend on shopping for himself and his accomplices, and found that he acted in furtherance of the common intention of the trio to commit robbery, and in turn, to silence Lee for the sake of avoid leaving witnesses behind. Hence, Chan found Too guilty of murdering Lee, and sentenced him to death on 28 August 1998. Too was hanged on 30 April 1999 after his appeal failed.[8][9][10][11] As for Too's accomplices, one of them (Ng Chek Siong) was caught in May 1998 and sentenced three months later to eight years' jail with ten strokes of the cane, while the other accomplice (Lee Chez Kee), whom Too claimed was the main offender responsible for the murder, was arrested in February 2006 and likewise executed for murder.[12][13][14]

In April 2000, Chan heard the case of 33-year-old Vincent Lee Chuan Leong, one of the three kidnappers and mastermind of the abduction of a 14-year-old girl for ransom in September 1999. Chan, in his judgement, noted Lee have no criminal records, and during the course of the kidnapping, he did not harm the girl and treated her well save for the trauma the victim gone through, and thus he decided that the death penalty was inappropriate, and instead sentenced Lee to life imprisonment.[15] Subsequently, the other two kidnappers Shi Song Jing and Zhou Jian Guang, who were illegal immigrants from China, were also sentenced to life in prison by another judge Tay Yong Kwang during a separate trial.[16]

Tenure as Solicitor-General and judge edit

In June 2001, Chan returned to AGC as Solicitor-General. In that same year itself, he was appointed Senior Counsel.[2] On 2 July 2007, he was sworn in as a High Court judge by President S. R. Nathan at the Istana.[3]

One of the cases which Chan presided as High Court judge was the 2008 Yishun triple murders, in which he sentenced 46-year-old Wang Zhijian to death in 2012 for the murder of one of the three victims while finding him guilty of culpable homicide for killing the two other victims. Chan's decision to pass the death sentence was upheld by the Court of Appeal of Singapore in 2014 when Wang tried to appeal the verdict (which was rejected), although the appellate court also amended the double culpable homicide convictions to murder based on the fact that Wang was not mentally unsound when he killed the other two victims.[17]

Chan was also the judge who sentenced Ipoh-born Malaysian Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam to death after finding him guilty of drug trafficking. Nagaenthran was originally set to be hanged on 10 November 2021 after serving 11 years on death row.[18][19] However, a day before his scheduled hanging, Nagaenthran was discovered to be infected with COVID-19 and thus his execution was suspended, with the courts allowing him time to recover and Nagaenthran himself had also appealed to reduce his sentence.[20] The appeal was dismissed on 29 March 2022, and he was executed on 27 April 2022.[21][22]

Chan was also the presiding judge during the trial of Azuar Ahamad, a logistics executive who was charged with sexually assaulting 22 women after befriending them and drugging them. Agreeing with the prosecutors’ description of Azuar as “Singapore’s worst serial rapist”, Chan admonished Azuar for his remorseless behavior and pointing out that the offender had committed the sexual crimes with a high level of premeditation, and also cited Azuar having said numerous lies to distance himself from the fact that he drugged the women and took advantage of them. Labelling Azuar as a menace to society and noting his high possibility to reoffend, Chan sentenced 44-year-old Azuar to a 37+1⁄2 years’ imprisonment and 24 strokes of the cane.[23]

References edit

  1. ^ "Supct | Media Releases". www.supremecourt.gov.sg. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  2. ^ a b c d "Supct | Justices". www.supremecourt.gov.sg. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  3. ^ a b c "New high court judge sworn in" (PDF). The Straits Times. 2007-07-03.
  4. ^ "In Conversation: An Interview with the Honourable Judicial Commissioner Chan Seng Onn". Singapore Law Review. 1998.
  5. ^ "AsiaOne Multimedia". www.asiaone.com. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  6. ^ "Gunman who shot Cisco officer gets death". The Straits Times. 16 September 1994.
  7. ^ "Gunman in goldsmith shop shoot-out hanged". The Straits Times. 16 July 1995.
  8. ^ "Professor's killer gets death". The Straits Times. 29 August 1998.
  9. ^ "Convicted because he didn't stop the murder". The Straits Times. 28 September 1998.
  10. ^ "Varsity don's killer loses appeal". The Straits Times. 10 November 1998.
  11. ^ "谋杀副教授死囚正法". Lianhe Zaobao (in Chinese). 1 May 1999.
  12. ^ "Jail and caning or robber in fatal hold-up". The Straits Times. 15 August 1998.
  13. ^ "Accused to hang-13 years after murder". The Straits Times. 11 October 2006.
  14. ^ "Don's murder: Man loses appeal, faces gallows". The Straits Times. 13 May 2008.
  15. ^ "Public Prosecutor v Vincent Lee Chuan Leong". Supreme Court judgements. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
  16. ^ "Public Prosecutor v Zhou Jian Guang and Another". Supremely Court judgements. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
  17. ^ "Guilty As Charged: Man murders lover, her daughter and flatmate after quarrel over money for crab". The Straits Times. 18 May 2016. Retrieved 21 April 2021.
  18. ^ "Drug trafficker did not commit act under duress, mentally 'not substantially' impaired, says MHA in response to petition". Today. 3 November 2021. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
  19. ^ "Public Prosecutor v Nagaenthran a/l K Dharmalingam (trial)" (PDF). Singapore Law Watch. 19 January 2011. Retrieved 6 November 2021.
  20. ^ "Drug trafficker facing execution gets further stay after testing positive for Covid-19". The Straits Times. 9 November 2021. Retrieved 9 November 2021.
  21. ^ "Singapore rejects Malaysian man Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam's 'hopeless' appeal against execution". South China Morning Post. 29 March 2022. Retrieved 29 March 2022.
  22. ^ "Singapore executes Malaysian on drugs charges after rejecting mental disability appeal". Today. 27 April 2022. Archived from the original on 27 April 2022. Retrieved 27 April 2022.
  23. ^ "Serial rapist gets 37-and-a-half years' jail, 24 strokes". TODAY. 28 May 2014.
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