The Best I Could (19 page)

After the trial had been going on for a few days, she called me to the dock to tell me that I was a better lawyer than people said. She was teasing again. I felt Chee was not a good witness. She was nervous and temperamental on the witness stand, but she came across as very intelligent and could hold her own against the deputy public prosecutor, Wong Kok Weng. Wong was a thorough gentleman but he was assisted by two other DPPs who I felt were not as good. In fact, the lady DPP gave me the impression that she was disappointed that Chee would not be hanged.

At the end of the trial, Chee’s sisters, though reluctant to pay our full fees, stood by her through the case. They swore affidavits to show that they were prepared to take care of her when she was released from prison and said that they would be responsible for her welfare. The affidavits made a difference when sentence was passed. After Chee was convicted and sentenced, I went to see her in prison. She was all smiles when she saw me and thanked me for a job well done. I asked her whether she wanted to appeal and she said no. I told her that her decision was right and that she should take her medication faithfully. She said she would and that when she is released from prison, she would look me up to take me out for dinner. I said that would be okay and left. That was the last time I saw her.

By all accounts, Huang Na was a normal eight-year-old who was a familiar sight at the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre where her parents, both Chinese nationals, worked. She was known to be friendly and respectful of anyone she met. On October 10, 2004, the lovable girl went missing.

Her mother was believed to be away in China at the time and the girl was being looked after by a friend. The initial reaction of her parents was possibly not to be too worried. After all, Huang Na was rumoured to have once returned to her parents’ village in China on her own. But as the days passed, her mother became more frantic and her worry spread like wildfire to members of the public. A massive search that stretched to Malaysia was conducted. Hundreds of volunteers started looking for her in isolated places. In Johor, taxi drivers joined in the search. The media ran stories of the missing girl almost daily. But people didn’t have to look too far from the wholesale centre to find her. Three weeks after Huang Na first went missing, police found a brown cardboard box sealed with adhesive tape in undergrowth at the nearby Telok Blangah Hill Park. It contained her decomposed body, wrapped in several layers of plastic. The police couldn’t immediately confirm if it was Huang Na’s body but did so later.

Twenty-two-year old Malaysian Took Leng How was initially classified as helping the police with their investigations. He had been the last person seen talking to Huang Na before she disappeared. Took, a vegetable packer at the wholesale centre, was a former colleague of Huang Na’s mother, Huang Shuying. He lived in the same flat with both mother and daughter and was said to be very close to them. Indeed, people had some reservations about Madam Huang in the weeks after the body was found and when details of the case were starting to surface. She had an earlier conviction for overstaying in Singapore but managed to return to Singapore with a false passport and as Huang Na’s guardian. Because she had burnt all her fingers and thumbs, her fingerprints could not be matched when she arrived in Singapore the second time with a different passport. Some people suspected that the girl was “adopted”. In any case, Took was charged with sexually assaulting Huang Na, then kicking and stomping on her until she died.

Took’s case began on July 11, 2005. The court was told by public prosecutors that he had initially lied to the police during the search for Huang Na and given them the slip. He had agreed to take a lie-detector test which was to be held on the morning of October 21, 2004. The night before the test, he told police officers that he had the contact number of someone who he claimed would lead them to Huang Na. He asked to return to his flat where this person’s mobile phone number was kept. At around 1.15 am on the day he was supposed to take the lie-detector test, police officers accompanied Took to his flat in Telok Blangah. Took, however, was unable to find the number and they left for the police station. Along the way, Took said he was hungry and they stopped at a food stall on Pasir Panjang Road. He ordered a plate of
roti prata
with chicken curry. Halfway through his meal, he excused himself to go to the toilet. This was when he was believed to have slipped away. It was later learnt that Took went to Woodlands in a taxi and sneaked across the causeway around 3.40 that morning. He then travelled to Penang where he went into hiding until he surrendered to the Royal Malaysian Police and was brought back to Singapore.

The details about what Huang Na went through were gruesome. She had been lured into a storeroom at the wholesale centre on the pretext of a game of hide-and-seek. According to Took, the game went horribly wrong. Took claimed he had tied Huang Na’s hands and feet as part of the game and that she had accidentally hurt herself falling on some boxes. When he saw her bleeding from the mouth, he panicked and started to strangle her. He undressed her to give the impression of a rape. There may have been some truth to this last claim because semen was never found on Huang Na or in the storeroom. The medical examiner found bruises on her right temple, scalp, chin, jaw and lips. It was also concluded that the nature of death was asphyxia.

During the case, Took appeared gaunt and pale but was calm. He occasionally looked at reporters and smiled. On August 26, 2005, Took was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. I would describe this case as the case of the man who shouldn’t have been hanged. From my first meeting with Took, I realised there was something wrong with him. The sickly smile, which was different from Anthony Ler’s arrogant one, and the confused and often irrelevant ranting convinced me that Took was mentally retarded. His IQ was 76 which suggested that he wasn’t playing with a full deck of cards. The defence expert, Dr R Nagulendran, agreed with me and testified on Took’s behalf. I felt his testimony was much better than that of Dr G S Devan from the Institute of Mental Health, whose evidence didn’t stand up to cross-examination. I am still mystified at Justice Lai Kew Chai’s decision to accept Dr Devan’s evidence. However, I was not surprised at the conviction. Neither was I surprised at his judgment which had lots of unexplained portions.

Took appealed the conviction. There had been some worrying gaps in his case which prosecutors and the police couldn’t address. A major technicality was that the cause of death could not be established. Huang Na could have choked on her own vomit due to fits or she could have been strangled by Took. More than 30,000 people signed a clemency petition for Took which was doing its rounds at the time. His murder conviction was upheld on a two-to-one vote. The last time the Court of Appeal was split in a capital case was 10 years before that. Then, a Myanmar national was acquitted by the trial judge of drug trafficking. The prosecution appealed and the Court of Appeal set him free with a two-to-one majority.

The Court of Appeal’s decision on Took was heartbreaking. At the hearing, it was quite clear that one of the three judges, Justice Kan Ting Chiu, was with me. Justice of Appeal Chao Hick Tin came alive during the arguments, especially when I started reading the evidence of the expert from the script. He asked some questions and seemed to be satisfied. He gave me the impression that he was at last following my arguments and I thought I had won him over. The third judge in the Court of Appeal was Chief Justice Yong Pung How. So, when we returned a few weeks later and were told that Justice Chao would read the majority decision, we thought for a moment that we had succeeded in the appeal. But as he read the judgement, we realised that Justice Chao was not with us. To me, Justice Kan’s dissenting voice was a clear and logical judgment which explained why the appeal should have been upheld. Members of the Bar were full of praise for him and his courage to dissent. I expected nothing less from him as I knew him from my Raffles Institution days. An attempt to win clemency for Took also failed, though the President took five months longer than the usual three months to make the decision. I believe this was partly due to the number of people who signed the clemency petition. Took was hanged on November 3, 2006.

Although I do not attend my clients’ funerals, I attended Took’s wake. I went in the afternoon with my two legal assistants, Anand Nalachandran and Sunil Sudheesan, to avoid the crowd and the press. We had received some donations for him which we gave to his family along with our own contribution. Took’s parents were glad to see me, and his mother and aunt hugged me and thanked me for what we had done for them. I felt sad when I saw Took lying in the coffin and, for a brief moment, I wished I was not a criminal lawyer. I wished our legal system had more room for compassion. It reminded me why I am so against the mandatory death sentence. In my opinion, when there is a split decision as was the case for Took, the death sentence should be commuted to life imprisonment either by the Court of Appeal itself or by the President.

I also think the local media didn’t help. It started off by practically convicting Took before the case started. The hype was great because it involved the murder of a child. Hundreds thronged the corridors of the courts, queueing up to view the proceedings. People waited patiently for an empty seat. But as the case progressed, I got the feeling that the media and members of the public began to realise that their first impression of Took may have been wrong. From what started out as a hopeless case, the odds began to shift in favour of Took. I felt it became a 50:50 case. People who initially condemned him became sympathetic. The case was a talking point in many coffee shops. Because of the extensive media coverage, it became difficult for me to go anywhere without being recognised. My son was amused at the number of people who would approach me to shake my hand and say a few good words about what I was doing for Took. Apart from the massive public interest, I should note that even representatives of the Chinese government were curious onlookers during the case.

During the case, I took to calling him Ah Took. The police made Ah Took demonstrate what he did in the storeroom when he was with Huang Na. The scene was recorded and shown in court. Everyone saw how he had stamped on Huang Na and kicked her. It was a very violent demonstration which probably did a lot of damage to his case. I recall when we first took instructions from him, Ah Took told us that sometimes he remembers things and sometimes he doesn’t. When we asked him why he agreed to re-enact the scene, he accused the police of persuading him to do it. Ah Took also said that he was asked to do specific things for the recording but couldn’t remember if he really did them to Huang Na. He said the police told him that if he co-operated, it would help them solve the case. Ah Took himself felt that if he co-operated and did what the police told him to do, they would certainly help reduce his charge. That was why he did it.

Despite Ah Took’s low IQ of 76, he did several clever things. One was to choose only those dustbins at the wholesale market that did not have any CCTV cameras pointing at them when he threw away Huang Na’s things. The other was the way he escaped from Singapore. I asked the psychiatrist how such things could be explained. He replied that though the measurement of intelligence quotient can be low, that does not discount the possibility that a person can do intelligent things. In fact, some of these acts can be brilliant, but when you are examining people for their intelligence levels, you can’t just take one or two specific acts to give a broader assessment.

When the police became suspicious and started interrogating Took, they had still not arrested him. He was considered a witness that they were interviewing. They asked Took if he was prepared to take a lie-detector test and he said he would. The police told him to go home and come back to the police station the next day. But Ah Took volunteered to be held in the station overnight, saying he would not be able to wake up on time the next day. He was truly a co-operative witness asking to be kept in custody. The police were sufficiently impressed and agreed.

While they were on the way back to the police station where he would be held in custody, Ah Took said he was hungry and needed something to eat. They went to a food stall and ordered some
pratas
for him. Ah Took said he needed to go to the toilet and from there he made his escape. As he was under police custody and was treated as a visitor during his interrogation earlier, he had been given a visitor’s pass which he wore around his neck. The pass had the emblem of the CID on it and with the pass, he walked quite boldly through Singapore customs checkpoint at the causeway. I think the immigration officers must have thought he was a police officer because of the pass.

After he escaped into Malaysia via Johor, Ah Took met up with some loyal friends who helped him to get to Penang. In Penang, I think such relations came into play again. He gave press conferences through a friend of his, telling all sorts of stories and even citing political issues like the Malaysia-Singapore relationship. He said he would sacrifice his freedom and surrender to preserve the relationship between the two neighbouring countries. He appeared to want to paint himself as a hero. I think, by this point, some delusions of grandeur had set in. There was probably some evidence of this when he had the CID pass on him too. He was deluded in that he thought he could be a saviour of two countries. That’s why he eventually surrendered.

Many people have asked me why Ah Took remained silent in court when he was given the opportunity to provide evidence. Once the prosecution has established a prima facie case, the accused is given two choices. He can remain silent and if he does, the court can draw an adverse inference if it wants to because he remained silent. Or he can go to the witness stand and give evidence, in which case he can be cross-examined by the public prosecutor and by the court. Ah Took had this choice.