One Thumb Up for CJ Chan's Decision

[uncleyap]

http://uncleyap-news.blogspot.com/2010/01/thumb-up-for-cj-chans-decision.html

Thursday, January 07, 2010

<!-- Begin .post --> A Thumb Up for CJ Chan's decision

I would like to express unreserved appreciation to the Court Of Appeal decision made this week, regarding cases can be re-opened to address miscarriage of justice. This is one rare but highly appreciated decision in law I had come across here, which I will never dream from the previous CJ Yong Pang How. This could indicate a change for the good, I believe Singaporeans will hope for more good decisions to come to serve justice for our people in the future.


There is no attempt to influence judiciary for any cases nor benefit any particular party here in my post. As bloggers and citizens of Singapore, we should exercise our expressions and comments in the hope for improvements in future Singapore.

URL of my related blog post

Sammyboy.Com Thread

 

[Black2545]

Does that mean… Case like David Hartanto Widjaja can be Reopen?

 

[uncleyap]

Does that mean… Case like David Hartanto Widjaja can be Reopen?

There are some stated conditions to reopen, pse refer to the URL of that Court of Appeal Decision, the conditions include discovery of new evidence or new legal arguments. That means if case already closed previously and after closing it some new legal arguments or new evidence had surfaced, then courts are to re-open the closed case upon such applications made to have it re-opened, based on these reasons - new evidence discovered for example.



Quite reasonable. That's the way things should be done. It is giving justice to where it is due, and doing so by offering more chances to allow justice to be delivered.

This decision is telling Singaporean courts that if they found closed cases that justice had not been done previously, then courts should reopen it to give justice another chance. That's why I said Thumb Up.

 

[scroobal]

There is no new evidence nor any issue with the actual court trial. It is also not opening a closed case. Yong did not use his right of appeal which every convicted capital case defendant has done.

An appeal for a capital case is automatic. Yong successfully requested that the appeal be withdrawn because he became a Buddhist while in remand and did want to tell a lie in court.

After Ravi convinced him to have the appeal heard , CA was asked to consider it. Its an administrative roadblock and CA merely removed the roadblock so that a condemned man is given every opportunity to be heard. CA conveniently latched on to Ravi's claim that there are new developments in the European courts on the unconstitutionality of the mandatory death sentence.

So the appeal will cover only the unconstitutionality of the mandatory death sentence. Note, that Privy Council and CA had previously ruled in 2 separate Singapore cases that it is constitutional.

There are some stated conditions to reopen, pse refer to the URL of that Court of Appeal Decision, the conditions include discovery of new evidence or new legal arguments. That means if case already closed previously and after closing it some new legal arguments or new evidence had surfaced, then courts are to re-open the closed case upon such applications made to have it re-opened, based on these reasons - new evidence discovered for example.



Quite reasonable. That's the way things should be done. It is giving justice to where it is due, and doing so by offering more chances to allow justice to be delivered.

 

[uncleyap]

Different context, I replied to Black2545 because he asked in the context of [COLOR=_______] e.g. David Hartanto Widjaja, instead of Yong's case by Ravi.

Ravi achieved a good valuable thing by obtaining this judgment which became a CASE LAW, binding all lower courts to take judiciary references and abide by the same principals in all other cases.

I was not indicating that there had been new evidence found in Yong's case, I was posting in different context which refers to other cases that this Yong's case can be applicable as a CASE LAW in legal submissions, it will cause precedence set by court of appeal which is Singapore's highest court, therefore other judges have to respect and follow this precedence.

In Chinese this is called 根据案例比照。
[/COLOR]

 

[scroobal]

This does not open the door to any other case. The only precedence that it sets is that in future if someone withdraws his appeal for a capital case conviction, it will be looked favourably. Except for Yong, never heard of anyone that did not appeal in a capital case.

As I said - he had the right to appeal, he did not use it,and now he wants to. The court has allowed for his appeal to be heard.

Different context, I replied to Black2545 because he asked in the context of [COLOR=_______] e.g. David Hartanto Widjaja, instead of Yong's case by Ravi.

Ravi achieved a good valuable thing by obtaining this judgment which became a CASE LAW, binding all lower courts to take judiciary references and abide by the same principals in all other cases.

I was not indicating that there had been new evidence found in Yong's case, I was posting in different context which refers to other cases that this Yong's case can be applicable as a CASE LAW in legal submissions, it will cause precedence set by court of appeal which is Singapore's highest court, therefore other judges have to respect and follow this precedence.

In Chinese this is called 根据案例比照。
[/COLOR]

 

[uncleyap]

This does not open the door to any other case. The only precedence that it sets is that in future if someone withdraws his appeal for a capital case conviction, it will be looked favourably. Except for Yong, never heard of anyone that did not appeal in a capital case.

As I said - he had the right to appeal, he did not use it,and now he wants to. The court has allowed for his appeal to be heard.

I already heard during my own trial in which (co-accused) Dr. CSJ had used this decision as a case law to convince the judge that even already closed cases can be re-opened as new evidence or new arguments in law arises, Dr CSJ was reading out a legal paper I think from M Ravi, quoting this particular Court of Appeal Decision. I was not subsequently given a hard copy of that, but I remembered what I heard in court. I feel that such as rare ruling is a good start therefore I had posted this msg in my blog.

If I had a copy of what CSJ read out in court, I would had posted it in my blog.

 

[zujjkiol]

Quote :

I won't be surprised if the TOC thingy is just another PAP machination.

Back to Yap, if one takes the perspective from the angle where he is a plant, a kind of monkey wrench, hired by PAP, then you don't need to be a Nobel Prize laureate to see how easy and with wanton abandonment he can go to jail, get sued, etc. knowing there's a Tua Pek kong and the "ow sua " to smooth out yr life if anything happens to yr family etc. A la Mafia, ok to be a fall guy because you will be taken care of. Just do what you're expected to do --to discredit the Oppos image (rather than any specific party) by inane asinine too-good-to-be-true wayang antics. Kingrant