1 The accused, at present 55 years old, pleaded guilty to a charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, punishable under s 304(a) of the Penal Code (Cap 224, 2008 Rev Ed) (the “Penal Code”):

2 On 18 October 2024, I sentenced the accused to 16 years’ imprisonment, backdated to 13 October 2022, giving brief oral reasons. He has appealed and these are my full grounds of decision.

3 The accused admitted to the statement of facts without qualification. At the material time, the accused was working as a bouncer and manager at “De Basement Live Disco” at 149 Geylang Road, #B1-02 (the “Disco”). ¹

4 On 13 February 2010, the accused began his shift as a bouncer at around 6.00pm. The deceased arrived at the Disco at about 8.00pm and ordered a bottle of “Martell” cognac. By 1.00am on 14 February 2010, the deceased had become intoxicated and disruptive. He walked onto the stage twice, spoke into the microphone in a slurred manner, and walked around challenging other patrons to drink with him. ² At around 1.30am, the deceased fought with other patrons, and the staff of the Disco intervened to escort him off the premises. ³

5 At about 2.00am, the deceased returned to the Disco and got involved in another confrontation with other patrons at a stairwell. In this confrontation, vulgarities were exchanged, and the deceased attempted to kick one of the patrons. The deceased lost his balance and rolled down the stairwell. ⁴

6 The accused heard the shouting from this commotion and went to the stairwell, where he saw the deceased lying at the bottom of the stairs. He told the deceased to leave but the deceased continued to lie on the ground, shouted expletives at the accused, and kicked the accused in the stomach. ⁵

7 The accused went back into the Disco and picked up a knife with a blade measuring at least 17.7cm in length. A bartender, one Chong Shiau Phin (“Chong”) saw the accused holding the knife and tried to stop him by grabbing his hand and telling him, “[d]on’t” in Hokkien. The accused brushed past Chong and returned to the stairwell with the knife, where he saw the deceased still lying there. The accused then stabbed the deceased twice in the left thigh to “teach him a lesson”. Leaving the deceased bleeding in the stairwell, the accused returned to the Disco. There, he threw the blood-stained knife into the wash basin. He told Chong that he had stabbed the deceased and carried on with his duties at the Disco. ⁶

8 Sometime before 4.00am, the deceased was discovered lying at the bottom of the stairwell in a pool of blood by an investor of the Disco, one Cheong Veng Ch’ng Vincent (“Cheong”). Cheong tried to render medical assistance and called a bouncer from another pub, one Wong Kar Ming (“Wong”) to assist him. At around 4.00am, the accused ended his shift, and saw Cheong and Wong tending to the deceased on his way out of the Disco. The accused left the premises. ⁷

9 At around 6.29am, Wong called “995” and furnished information on the incident. ⁸ When the paramedics arrived, they saw the deceased seated with his back leaning against the wall at the bottom of a flight of stairs at the Disco. He was bleeding from a puncture wound at his legs. He was conveyed by paramedics to Tan Tock Seng Hospital where he was pronounced dead at about 7.42am. ⁹

10 Later that same morning, the accused learnt that the deceased had died. He fled Singapore for Malaysia at around 8.45am.

11 An autopsy was performed on the deceased on 15 February 2010. There were two incised wounds: ¹⁰

The pathologist assessed that injury number 32 was sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death. The cause of death was primarily from haemorrhage. Death would have taken a considerable time and would not have been instant. It may have been possible to save the deceased’s life if prompt surgical attention with blood replacement had taken place. ¹¹

12 The accused remained at large until 11 October 2022 when he surrendered to the Royal Malaysian Police. He was returned to Singapore on 13 October 2022 and arrested by officers from the Singapore Police Force on the same day. ¹²

13 Section 304(a) of the Penal Code states:

14 In the present case, the accused could not be caned as he was 55 years old at the time of sentencing (see s 325(1)(b) of the Criminal Procedure Code 2010 (“CPC”)). The Prosecution did not ask for imprisonment in lieu of caning.

15 Turning to the appropriate term of imprisonment, the Prosecution sought 15–18 years of imprisonment. ¹³ They highlighted the following aggravating factors:

16 Retribution was, in the Prosecution’s submission, the primary sentencing consideration in this case. This was because the harm caused was of the most serious kind, and the accused’s culpability was significant. ¹⁸ General deterrence was also a relevant sentencing consideration to send a clear signal that the law does not condone violence as a solution to problems. ¹⁹ The suggested term of 15–18 years’ imprisonment referenced the cases of Public Prosecutor v Tan Teck Soon [2011] SGHC 137 (“Tan Teck Soon”) and PP v Tan Keng Huat (CC 25/2011) (“Tan Keng Huat”).

17 The Defence, on the other hand, urged the court to impose a sentence of not more than 11 years’ imprisonment. ²⁰ The Defence made the following contentions. First, the accused’s culpability had to be assessed in light of the following contextual features:

(a) there was some element of prior provocation from the deceased, ²¹ analogous to the decision of PP v Low Chuan Woo [2014] SGHC 118 (“Low Chuan Woo”); ²²

(b) the charges did not involve the highest form of mens rea within s 299 of the Penal Code, because while the accused intended to inflict the injuries, he never intended to cause the death of the deceased, ²³ and that he “naively underestimated the effects of his actions”, not realising that the stab wounds could cause death. ²⁴

18 Second, while he absconded for over 12 years, the weight of this aggravating factor should be reduced as he surrendered himself voluntarily to the Malaysian police, such that any uplift for the abscondment should not be more than two years’ jail. ²⁵

19 Third, he had been cooperative with the authorities after his arrest, and pleaded guilty timeously, demonstrating remorse. ²⁶

20 Fourth, the Defence referred to precedents to make several arguments.

(a) First, the Defence suggested using the sentencing approach set out in PP v Miya Manik [2020] SGHC 164 (“Miya Manik (HC)”) and affirmed by the Court of Appeal in PP v Miya Manik and another appeal and another matter [2022] SGCA 73. ²⁷

(b) 11 years’ imprisonment was suggested as appropriate on the basis of various precedents cited: Low Chuan Woo (see [17(a)] above), Tan Teck Soon (see [16] above), PP v Sarle Steepan s/o Kolundu [2009] 4 SLR(R) 1143 (“Sarle Steepan”), PP v David How Kim Fwee (HC/CC 17/2011) (“David How”), PP v Khor Tzoong Meng (HC/CC 55/2017) (“Khor Tzoong Meng”), and PP v Pak Kian Huat (unreported). ²⁸

21 The sentencing inquiry in cases of culpable homicide must always be fact-sensitive, given the wide variety of circumstances in which these offences are committed: see Lim Ghim Peow v PP [2014] 4 SLR 1287 at [55]; Dewi Sukowati v PP [2017] 1 SLR 450 (“Dewi Sukowati”) at [15]. I deal with the various precedents raised in this light.

22 I start with Miya Manik (HC) because it was not a case of culpable homicide. The accused in that case, Manik, had been convicted of a charge under s 326 read with s 34 of the Penal Code, of voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means. In my view, it was not appropriate to use this precedent as the mens rea required under that section is different from s 304(a). The facts of Miya Manik (HC) and the present case were also wholly different. In Miya Manik (HC), three men attacked the deceased. The Prosecution failed to prove that Manik delivered the fatal blow and the charge was specifically amended because of that fact. In the present case, the fact that the accused possessed the intent to deliver the fatal wound made s 304(a) of the Penal Code, with its wholly different sentencing considerations, relevant.

23 I also disagreed with the Defence’s submission to use the sentencing framework in Miya Manik (HC). I did not think this was appropriate. In Miya Manik (HC), I adapted the framework for sentencing from Sundaresh Menon CJ’s decision in Ng Soon Kim v Public Prosecutor [2019] SGHC 247 (“Ng Soon Kim”), which dealt with s 324 of the Penal Code. I did so because s 324 stands in relation to s 323 in a similar manner as s 326 stands in relation to s 325: see Miya Manik (HC) at [119]. Sections 324 and 326 are each aggravated analogues of sister offences (under ss 323 and 325 respectively). The s 323 offence of voluntarily causing hurt mirrors the s 324 offence of voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means. Similarly, whereas s 325 creates the offence of voluntarily causing grievous hurt, s 326 creates the offence of voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means. This similarity in the structure of the offences of ss 324 and 323 and the offences of ss 326 and 325, is the reason I found the s 324 sentencing framework in Ng Soon Kim relevant to s 326. In particular, the sentencing framework first considers the indicative sentence that would have been imposed under the “base” offence (the “base offences” being ss 323 and 325), and then applies an uplift for the nature of the dangerous means used. In contrast, the present case was concerned with an offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under s 304(a) of the Penal Code. Section 304(a) does not conform to the structure I have previously outlined. To the contrary, in the context of s 304(a), courts have refrained from imposing sentencing frameworks or benchmarks for culpable homicide because the range of circumstances in which such offences are committed are extremely varied: see, for example, PP v Tan Kei Loon Allan [1998] 3 SLR(R) 679 at [33], and the cases I have highlighted at [12] above.

24 Turning to the culpable homicide cases, I did not take into account the unreported cases. Our courts have stated on more than one occasion that sentences meted out in unreported decisions should not be relied upon when determining the appropriate sentence for subsequent cases: Luong Thi Trang Hoang Kathleen v PP [2010] 1 SLR 707 at [21]; Abdul Mutalib bin Aziman v PP [2021] 4 SLR 1220 at [99]. This is because unreported decisions lack critical details concerning the circumstances of the case, and the lack of detailed reasoning undermines the utility of such cases as relevant comparators: Toh Suat Leng Jennifer v PP [2022] 5 SLR 1075 at [51]. The unreported cases raised on both sides also had different factual circumstances. The Defence referred to two unreported cases, David How and Khor Tzoong Meng, where very low sentences of seven and eight years’ imprisonment respectively were imposed in the context of beer-related brawls. I did not find those factual matrices similar to the present case. In both the unreported cases, the deceased and the accused were actively engaged in a fight, whereas in this case, the deceased was lying on the ground, injured from his fall and unable to resist. I similarly found the facts of Tan Keng Huat, an unreported case cited by the Prosecution, quite different. There, the accused, who was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment and 12 strokes of the cane, confronted the deceased with a friend after a separate earlier incident where the deceased had beaten his brother up.

25 Coming to the more relevant reported cases, I first dealt with Low Chuan Woo. In Low Chuan Woo, a 45-year-old offender pleaded guilty to an offence punishable under s 304(a) of the Penal Code and was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. There, the deceased had become intoxicated, and first demanded that a performing artiste at the pub drink a tequila shot that he had bought for her. When she refused, the deceased became agitated and demanded to see the owner of the pub, who was the accused. As a result, the accused approached the deceased to try and pacify him. However, the deceased proceeded to splash a shot of tequila on the artiste, causing her to cry. Despite the accused’s attempts to reason with the deceased, the deceased, who was considerably larger than the accused, grabbed hold of the accused’s neck and pulled him out of the pub through the rear door. The deceased and the accused then engaged in a quarrel in which the deceased grabbed the accused’s shirt and neck. When the deceased’s brother-in-law and a bartender tried to calm the deceased down, the deceased punched the bartender in the eye. It was only when the deceased tried to push the accused’s head against an iron gate, that the accused broke free and ran back into the pub, retrieved a knife, and then ran out to confront the deceased using the knife. In the ensuing fight, the accused stabbed the deceased twice.

26 In the circumstances, the court concluded that the deceased had been “implacable”, and that the accused had “[shown] considerable restraint before he was provoked beyond what any normal person could reasonably bear in the situation” (at [17]). The court also understood why the accused eventually felt the need to arm himself, given the danger that the accused and his staff faced that night. Those facts were wholly different from the present case, where the accused stabbed a man lying prone and injured on the floor.

27 At the other end of the spectrum is Sarle Steepan. In Sarle Steepan, the offender pleaded guilty to an offence punishable under s 304(a) of the Penal Code. The deceased was a two-month-old baby whose mother was in a romantic relationship with the offender. The offender had been angry with the deceased’s mother for cheating on him, and in his anger, slapped the deceased’s face repeatedly and dropped her on the ground at some point. The High Court sentenced him to 18 years’ imprisonment and 16 strokes of the cane.

28 The Defence submitted that the present case was significantly less serious than Sarle Steepan for the following reasons: (a) there could not have been any provocation in Sarle Steepan by the deceased, being a two-month old baby; (b) the offender in Sarle Steepan assaulted the baby on her head, which was an obviously vulnerable part of her body; and (c) the offence occurred in the context of a physically abusive domestic relationship. At the same time, the Defence acknowledged that there were some factors that were more serious in the present case, such as the fact that the accused in this case was armed whereas the offender in Sarle Steepan was not, and that the accused in this case had absconded. I agreed, very broadly, that this accused merited a lower sentence than imposed in Sarle Steepan.

29 Both the Prosecution and Defence used Tan Teck Soon as a reference point. In Tan Teck Soon, the accused pleaded guilty to an offence punishable under s 304(a) of the Penal Code. Following a quarrel in which it appeared to the accused that the deceased, who was his 20-year-old girlfriend, wanted to end their relationship, the accused, who was 19 years old at the time, decided to die together with the deceased. He pushed her over a parapet from the 12th floor. The accused then swung himself over the same parapet. The deceased died from this fall. The accused survived as his fall was broken by metal scaffolding that had been erected on the ground floor. The court found that his offence was an impulsive decision, while affirming that he still had the intention to kill the deceased (at [11]). He was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment.

30 In the Defence’s view, Tan Teck Soon was more serious than the present case. I disagreed for the reasons that follow. First, it was argued that there was no provocation in Tan Teck Soon whereas the accused in the present case had been provoked. I rejected this argument. The only “provocation” that the accused could be said to have been subjected to was that, when he told the deceased to leave, the deceased shouted a vulgarity at him and kicked him in the stomach. ²⁹ This could not suffice as an excuse for violent behaviour with a deadly weapon. The accused’s savage reaction was out of all proportion to that which he had received.

31 The second argument was related to the first, which was that the offender in Tan Teck Soon had the specific intention to cause death, while the accused only intended to cause such injury as is likely to cause death. This argument related to the accused’s intention, and this is an appropriate juncture to deal with the Prosecution’s and Defence’s arguments regarding the accused’s intention. On the one hand, the Prosecution argued that there was premeditation. On the other, the Defence argued that the accused simply underestimated the effects of his action. Neither was apposite. In this context, the Prosecution relied upon the Court of Appeal’s guidance in Dewi Sukowati at [21]:

32 The facts of this case were different from Dewi Sukowati. The accused in Dewi Sukowati decided to kill the deceased in order to evade arrest. Here the knife wounds were not preceded by extended planning on the part of the accused. There was forethought and intention, but not a calculated decision to kill the deceased in order to evade arrest. At the same time, this was not an impulsive action as suggested by the Defence’s argument. The accused was deliberate in choosing a 17.7cm-long weapon, and intentional in stabbing the deceased twice and deeply each time, at a time when the deceased could not resist. He then chose to leave the deceased to bleed for at least another two hours without checking on him, and again did not assist at the end of his shift. In this context, the accused’s state of mind is far more culpable than that of the accused in Tan Teck Soon, who formed his intention, in an extremely emotional moment, to kill both himself and his girlfriend. Returning, in this context, to the Defence’s argument that an intention to kill is more culpable than an intention to cause such injury as is likely to cause death, this distinction is not made in s 304(a) of the Penal Code and would not be consistent with the statute, which does not provide a lower tier of punishment for the latter kind of intention. Both kinds of intention are punishable in the same way, depending upon the relevant facts and circumstances. In my view, the differing facts and circumstances between the present case and Tan Teck Soon illustrates how any assertion that one kind of intent is more culpable than the other may only be made in a very general way in the context of s 304(a) of the Penal Code; other factual circumstances may be more important in assessing culpability.

33 Third, the Defence argued that causing a fall from height is significantly more likely to cause death than a knife. Again, this was a general statement that did not assist with the assessment of the facts. The knife in the present case was 17.7cm long, and the accused could not but have noticed that almost the whole of the knife would have been plunged into the deceased’s thigh on both the occasions in which he stabbed the deceased. There was no meaningful difference to be drawn between the two causes of death in both cases. It could be said, conversely, that to bleed to death is a more painful and protracted form of death than a fall from height.

34 Fourth, the Defence argued there was an abuse of trust by the accused in Tan Teck Soon which was absent in the present case. ³⁰ Having read the grounds of decision for Tan Teck Soon, I did not understand the High Court to have made a finding of an abuse of trust. Conversely, in the present case, the accused was on the premises because he was employed to maintain peace and order. As a bouncer and manager, he was being paid to exercise his authority to secure the safety of patrons.

35 On the other hand, there were two factors that made this case more serious than Tan Teck Soon. The accused in Tan Teck Soon was a 19-year-old first offender when he decided he wanted to die together with his 20-year-old girlfriend, whereas the accused in this case was 40 years of age when he attacked the 23-year old deceased. While I did not take into account his record as a consideration for sentencing because his past offences were dated, he was not a first offender; it would not be correct to treat him as a first offender. In this context, in view of the accused’s age and experience, it is appropriate to point out that there was no evidence for defence counsel’s characterisation of the accused as a naïve individual (see [17(b)], above).

36 An aggravating factor in this case that was not present in Tan Teck Soon is that the accused absconded and was out of the jurisdiction for an extended period of time. In the present case there was sufficient nexus with the offence for the absconding to count as an aggravating factor: see Cheang Geok Lin v PP [2018] 4 SLR 548 (“Cheang Geok Lin”) at [27]–[28]. The Defence suggested an uplift of two years, taking reference from the offence in s 103(5) of the CPC for which the prescribed maximum is three years. The analogy may not have been apposite, because s 103 of the CPC is concerned with an accused person absconding where there is a bail bond in place. In any event, in my view, such an approach was not consistent with Cheang Geok Lin, where Menon CJ cautioned at [27] against imposing a sentence that is aimed at punishing the offender for an offence he had not been charged with and that rather, the court’s endeavour is to consider the facts relating to the abscondment in the light of assessing the offender’s culpability for the offence that he has been charged with. I therefore considered the issue of the accused fleeing to Malaysia and remaining there for more than 12 years in the context of the various aggravating and mitigating factors below.

37 I turned then to the broader issues at hand. Retribution and deterrence were the predominant considerations in this case. First, the accused had been employed to maintain order. Instead, he was violent towards the deceased, who was also a patron. Second, the deceased was clearly injured, defenceless and vulnerable at the time of the attack. Third, the accused plunged the knife into the deceased with enough force to bury almost the entire length of the knife, twice. In particular, the knife was around 17.7cm in length and the two stab wounds were 14cm and 13cm deep, with the second stab wound being the fatal wound. ³¹ Fourth, the accused displayed a blatant callousness for the deceased’s life, leaving him to bleed out at the bottom of the stairwell after committing the offence. Instead of assisting, he left at the end of his shift. Lastly, when he discovered the deceased had died, he absconded for a lengthy period of over 12 years. ³²

38 In mitigation, it is laudable that the accused turned himself in and entered an early plea of guilt. ³³ I took into account that Stage 1 of the Guidelines on Reduction in Sentences for Guilty Pleas applied and was to be balanced against the aggravating factors.

39 Having regard to all the facts and circumstances, I sentenced the accused to 16 years’ imprisonment, backdated to the date of his arrest.