SINGAPORE: A man was given a 16-week prison sentence for cheating, and the Health Promotion Board reduced the sentence to 12 weeks after the Chief Justice granted his appeal on Wednesday( Sep 20 ).
At the same time, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon lifted significant portions of the lawyer’s entries for his reason of choice, reprimanding the lower court judge for having” unsatisfactory” judicial process.
According to Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, District Judge Soh Tze Bian, a judge in the lower court, presumably intended to impose the sentence without first hearing oral arguments, as is customary.
David Christopher Newton, a 44-year-old American nation, has already completed the 16-week prison sentence imposed by the lower judge and left Singapore, but he appealed regardless because, in his opinion,” a fair reading” was not given to him.
In order to deceive the Health Promotion Board ( HPB ) into believing he had received a full dose of COVID-19, Dr. Jipson Quah and his assistant Thomas Chua Cheng Soon had conspired against him on one charge.
Rather, he had paid S$ 6, 000 to have salt shots at Mayfair Medical Clinic in Yishun for himself and his unwary family.
Quah had given the shots, and Chua, his associate, was the one who made the plans after Newton joined the Healing the Divide anti-vaxxer team on Telegram in the end of 2021 and was given his phone number.
Mr. Paul Loy of WongPartnership, Newton’s attorney, appealed the sentence on two grounds: that it was obviously increased and that the district judge was distorted.
Mr. Loy cited Judge Soh’s preparation of his grounds of choice before either aspect had made dental submissions on April 27 of this year to support his claim.
In addition, the majority of the court’s decision-making premises were copied from the prosecutions’ written entries, including the cross-references.
While the court considers Judge Soh’s actions to be” completely unsatisfactory from the perspective of considering what would constitute acceptable judicial practice ,” Chief Justice Menon stated that this did not constitute” apparent bias.”
Nevertheless, the Chief Justice emphasized that Judge Soh’s reproduction of the prosecutions’ written proposals in his grounds of choice was” unsatisfactory.”
According to him,” when a judge reproduces significant portions of one side’s submissions, it exposes itself to the cost that it lacked judgment and merely adopted one part of it without giving it enough thought or discernment.”
According to the Chief Justice, this makes it possible for the court to receive a problem of real or apparent bias.
Importantly, he continued,” If there are questions as to the fairness and rigor with which a situation is appraised, public trust in the justice of the judicial procedure will be considerably undermined.”
He claimed that Judge Soh’s attendance at the sentencing reading” apparently intending to pronounce the word he intended to enforce without hearing oral entries” made this situation worse.
Oral submissions are typically” commonly made ,” and Mr. Loy arrived ready for that, according to Chief Justice Menon.
He stated,” In these circumstances, I believe the( district judge’s ) handling of the case as a whole was unsatisfactory.”
Despite this, Newton’s case was reevaluated by the Chief Justice, who decided that a 12-week jail sentence would be more suitable. He reevaluated Newton’s event after concluding that the case used to support the previous prison expression was inappropriate.
In closing, he said,” I want to make it clear that while the city determine fell short of the expectations for competence from our criminal soldiers, I do not consider this as reflecting the general mindset of our judges who uniformly and consistently uphold the highest standards in their daily job of carrying out the grave duty that is entrusted to them.”
” This incident does not detract from their work.”
He continued by saying that he anticipates that his advice may offer” as a reminder of the need for all of us who take the administrative oath of office, to be mindful of how important it is to always ensure that justice is done, as well as that it has been clearly seen as being done.”