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District Judge Soh Tze Bian leaves his position
Mr Soh Tze Bian made the news in the past two years after the quality of his work was publicly highlighted twice by two Supreme Court judges.ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO
SINGAPORE – District Judge Soh Tze Bian has left his positions as a judge and a deputy registrar of the State Courts.
A Government Gazette notice published on Jan 16 said Mr Soh would cease to be a district judge and deputy registrar of the State Courts from Jan 17.
In response to queries, a spokesman for the judiciary said on Feb 11 that Mr Soh, who was appointed a district judge on Aug 1, 2008, retired from the Singapore Judicial Service.
Mr Soh made the news in the past two years after the quality of his work was publicly highlighted twice by two Supreme Court judges.
In September 2023, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon said Mr Soh had fallen short of the standards of professionalism expected of the judiciary after he was found to have reproduced large chunks of the prosecution’s submissions in his written grounds of decision.
The Chief Justice ruled that while the district judge’s conduct was wholly unsatisfactory as a matter of judicial practice, it did not give rise to a reasonable suspicion of bias.
Chief Justice Menon said: “I do not regard this as reflective of the general attitude of our judicial officers, who uniformly and consistently uphold the highest standards in their daily work of discharging the grave responsibility that is entrusted to them. Their efforts should not be tarnished by this incident.”
He made these remarks as he delivered his decision to allow an appeal by a man whom Mr Soh had sentenced to 16 weeks’ jail in April 2023 for conspiring with a doctor to falsify Covid-19 vaccination records.
The Chief Justice reduced the offender’s jail term to 12 weeks after concluding that the risk of potential harm to the Health Promotion Board was low.
The second incident happened in December 2024, when Mr Soh again used substantial portions of the prosecution’s submissions in his judgment without his own analysis.
High Court Justice Aidan Xu said in a written judgment that the district judge had failed to apply his mind to the material before him in the case of a taxi driver who was convicted of molesting a teenage girl.
The High Court judge did not identify the district judge in his judgment, as is the practice in appellate court judgments, but a check showed that the trial judge was Mr Soh.
The taxi driver was convicted in October 2023 and sentenced to eight months’ jail.
After the taxi driver appealed against his conviction and sentence, Justice Xu set aside Mr Soh’s decision and decided the entire case afresh.
Ultimately, the High Court judge concluded that there was no apparent bias, and the conviction and sentence remained.
When asked if Mr Soh’s retirement was due to the quality of his work being critiqued, the judiciary said it had no further comments on this matter
