SINGAPORE: The Chief Justice determined that a reformed upskirter and two individuals who engaged in copying while in college were eligible for admission as activists and lawyers of the Supreme Court, and they have been admitted to the Bar.
For taking upskirt video of a person on public transportation in 2018, Mr. Chester Lee Jun Ming was imprisoned for one month.
During his final semester at the National University of Singapore( NUS ), Mr. Chong Weng Teng” self-plied” by using passages from another research paper he had submitted for a different module.
Ms. Lin Shuang Ju plagiarized another author’s work in an article she wrote for Lexicon, a student legal publication club affiliated with Singapore Management University( SMU ).
Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon stated in a decision made public on Monday( Oct 9) that the applicant’s character was the primary consideration in attendance software.
After going over each of their cases, he agreed to let them in after concluding that Mr. Lee had as shown that his character had been changed and that the circumstances surrounding Mrs. Chong and Ms Lin’s cases did not point to deceit or any other character flaw.
The Attorney General, the Law Society of Singapore, and the Singapore Institute of Legal Education determined that the candidates were” fit and proper” for registration based on their personality for all three applications.
THE CASE OF MR. LEE
In May 2017, Mr. Lee captured a girl on two upskirt films while riding public transportation. In January 2018, he admitted to insulting a person’s reserve. A second, related charge was also taken into account. He was given the harsh sentence of one month in prison.
Although the crime had occurred six years earlier, the Chief Justice remarked that its seriousness never be overstated.
Someone capable of committing such an offense” will almost always be found to be inadequate for admission as an advocate and solicitor in terms of his character ,” according to Chief Justice Menon. Physical offenses” always and eventually entail a serious violation of the dignity and physical integrity, frequently causing deep-seated trauma.”
However, he discovered that Mr. Lee had” properly reformed his personality” over the previous six years and was” no longer the same person as the person who committed the offense.”
He noted, among other things, that Mr. Lee followed MRT staff’s instructions when he was apprehended, confessed to his wrongdoing to the police, and immediately informed his company of the cost while expressing regret.
Mr. Lee maintained a spotless legal and educational history after being released from prison, according to the Chief Justice.
He continued to work full-time, enrolled in law school, graduated, passed the bar exams, and finished a practice teaching deal.
Additionally, Mr. Lee got character references from two people, including his immediate officer and a former Malaysian prosecutor who claimed to have corrected his character after learning from his errors.
Chief Justice Menon even remarked that Mr. Lee did not attempt to minimize his guilt in any way when he applied for entrance, but rather fully disclosed his offense.
Instead, he acknowledged that his actions were” wrong, despicable, and disrespectful to women ,” and the Chief Justice was convinced that” considerable reformation of his character” had taken place.
Additionally, he said that” nearly all forms of legal punishment are inevitably intended to, and would, have some remedial effect on the offender.”
According to him,” Legal abuse can give an offender the motivation to understand why what they did was bad and to reform themselves to avoid doing the same again.”
It seems reasonable to assume that legal consequence has contributed in some way to an applicant’s character reformation when they have endured it and have kept a clear record for an extended period of time afterward.
Due to all of these factors, Chief Justice Menon determined that Mr. Lee had changed since his offense and was suitable for bar registration.
THE Circumstances OF PLAGIARISM
Mr. Chong, the next person, stole his own job while enrolled in the China and International Economic Law component of the NUS ‘ Faculty of Law during his last quarter.
He reused sections of another study papers he had formerly submitted for a different module when submitting this one.
Such behavior was forbidden by NUS Law’s humane conduct standards and its copying policy.
After the class conducted a copying investigation, Mr. Chong acknowledged his wrongdoing, expressed regret, and stated that he would take any punishment.
In order to postgraduate in 2022, he retaken the unit after receiving zero signs on the paper as a punishment.
According to Chief Justice Menon, this” academic offense” was caused by his ignorance of plagiarism instructions and” his ignorance that theft only involved copying someone else’s work ,” not by a lack of academic unity.
He was discovered to be honest when he self-plied, but really conscious that his actions were against NUS’s rules.
According to Chief Justice Menon, Mr. Chong’s neglect in this instance did not reveal a character flaw.
He emphasized how crucial it was for Mr. Chong to admit his error, express regret for it, and accept the punishment without hesitation right away. Despite the fact that there was no common report, he even fully disclosed his offense in his application for admission to the table.
When a senior lecturer asked the next applicant, Ms. Lin, to write an article on cats trusts for SMU’s Lexicon, she plagiarized the work of another author.
Early in July of this year, the article was published in the Singapore Law Journal, but immediately after, a copying objection was received.
She is accused of plagiarizing a piece written by Mr. Andrew B. F. Carnabuci. In the notes of her post, Ms. Lin had cited Mr. Carnabuci’s content twice.
At a meeting on July 26 of this year, Ms. Lin gave her accounts of what had happened to SMU. Domestic investigations by SMU revealed some evidence of theft in the form of some use of other people’s work without proper attribution.
But, SMU also discovered that by improving identification and editing appropriately, this could be fixed. Ms. Lin apologized to Mr. Carnabuci in a letter, and he accepted her apologies.
The Chief Justice concurred that Ms. Lin’s theft didn’t seem to have involved deception. He took into account her quick apology, which Mr. Carnabuci accepted.
The Chief Justice claimed that the issue with Ms. Lin’s post was that she had paraphrased different concepts from various articles, cited those texts, and synthesized andnbsp, those concepts into an essay on the subject.
This wasn’t appropriate for an intellectual article, even though it might have been suitable for a university assignment. Ms. Lin entirely misunderstood what was expected of an intellectual publication in that regard, he claimed.
It was Ms. Lin’s second time publishing an educational article, and because it lacked publishability, it was gradually retracted.
Chief Justice Menon admitted her to the club because there was no evidence of deception in the situation.