The following was first published in The Online Citizen.
The Court of Appeal has reserved its judgement in the case of Ramalingam Ravinthran v Attorney-General after the appellant’s lawyer Mr M Ravi mounted a challenge to the use of prosecutorial discretion at the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Mr Ravinthran was arrested alongside with a Mr Sundar Arujunan in 2006. Both were charged with drug trafficking.
However, while Mr Ravinthran was charged with the full amount of drugs (5560g of cannabis and 2078g cannabis mixture), Mr Arujunan was only charged with trafficking in 499.99g of cannabis and 999.99g of cannabis mixture, just below the thresholds for the Mandatory Death Penalty. Therefore, Mr Arujunan has received 20 years in jail with caning, while Mr Ravinthran is on death row.
“Equal before the law”
Human rights lawyer Mr Ravi argued before Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong, Justice V K Rajah and Justice Andrew Phang that although the prosecution does have discretion in charging individuals, this discretion is limited by Article 12 (1) of the Singapore Constitution, which states, “All persons are equal before the law and entitled to the equal protection of the law.” Thus, it is unfair for the prosecution to charge two individuals with the same offence, yet with different amounts that result in unequal sentences.
“The Attorney-General chose to alter a scientific fact,” Mr Ravi said.
In the light of this unequal treatment, Mr Ravi asked for the Court of Appeal to amend his client’s death sentence to a non-capital sentence.
Decisions should be left to Prosecution
Public Prosecutor Ms Mavis Chionh said that although Article 12 requires equal punishment for the same level of legal guilt, it does not require equal punishment for different moral blameworthiness.
However, Justice Rajah asked how two people could be charged with different amounts despite it being the same bag of drugs, saying, “Is it proper prosecutorial discretion to salami slice the physical amount?”
“Parliament has not decreed that everyone found with that amount [above the threshold for the Mandatory Death Penalty] shall be charged and put to death,” Ms Chionh said, adding that the decision was left to the Prosecution.
She stated that it was not a “fiction” to charge Mr Arujunan with a lesser amount than Mr Ravinthran, as the amount in Mr Arujunan’s case was “a subset of the [full] amount”.
Ms Chionh then went on to state that the factors involved in how the Prosecution chooses to charge an individual were not purely legal, but also included extra-legal and moral aspects, as individual circumstances had to be taken into account. For that reason, she argued that prosecutorial discretion should generally “not be reviewable”.
She further added that Mr Ravi should not have asked the court to amend his client’s sentence, as it would usurp the Prosecution’s discretion. She said, “The remedy is to ask for the case to be remitted for consideration by the prosecution.”
Although Ms Chionh declined to elaborate upon the Prosecution’s reasons for reducing Mr Arujunan’s charge, Mr Ravi said that it was explained to him in a letter from the Attorney-General’s Chambers that it was due to Mr Arujunan’s low IQ of 62.
A situation caused by the Mandatory Death Penalty?
At one point during the hearing, Chief Justice Chan observed that this was a situation created by the existence of the Mandatory Death Penalty. “If there had not been a Mandatory Death Penalty you could charge with the same offence and go to court,” he said. “For me, that’s where the difficulty lies.”
Throughout the hearing, Mr Ravinthran sat in silence between his police guards. After the hearing was over, he waved to his family members and exchanged a few words with them before being led away.
Should this appeal be dismissed, Mr Ravinthran will have no other legal recourse but to appeal to President Tony Tan for clemency.
