:: Tossed Salad and Scramble Eggs ::

:: Thursday, August 16, 2007 ::

Dear Reader,

This blog isn't dead yet! While I've been writing privately, I know its been awhile since I've published quite about anything useful on this page. I have lots to share, but I will try sometime soon this summer to write in perspective. Hopefully, write better.

Till then,
Steph

:: Stuffy 8/16/2007 08:56:00 AM [+] ::
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Time is passing so slowly...

Apart from doing an all-nighter to finish some last minute work, and not having slept a single hour, I'm just waiting to catch the cab to Heathrow and fly off to Florida. Disneyland here I come! Be back soon.

:: Stuffy 3/21/2007 11:37:00 PM [+] ::
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Disturbing case in Singapore's court of law?

I was reading a blog post on Gayle Goh's blog on Amara Tochi written about a month ago (how I arrived at her blog is another story). The story goes as such, Amara Tochi was to be hung for drug trafficking in Singapore. The crime and punishment is nothing new, but the lines in between is particularly disturbing. The judgement given before the death sentence by Kan Ting Chiu was as such;

"There was no direct evidence that [Amara Tochi] knew the capsules contained diamorphine. There was nothing to suggest that Smith had told him they contained diamorhine, or that he had found that out of his own." paragraph 42 SGHC 233."

BUT...

"Tochi should have known and therefore he is guilty".

He was executed at 21.

The incident is hauntingly familiar and brought me back to when I was sitting in Court. 2 (Court of Appeal) in the former Supreme Court following the proceedings of another drug trafficking case. Incidently, the judge who preceeded over the case was also Kan Ting Chiu. I was 16 then. Why had I remembered his name so clearly? At that time, I was amused at his dry humor, which was extremely entertaining admist the mundane proceedings.

I stayed throughout the entire case (3 weeks) because I wanted to know the verdict. At 16, I was naive to think that there was a glimmer of hope for the defendants (there were three). Had I been much older, the outcome to me would have been apparent.

Witnessing the death penalty being passed in the court of law was personally jarring and it would be one of the reasons why I chose to do another discipline instead later on in my life. To recount, the families of the defendants were there, wives and children. Because I had been following the proceedings, on the day that the judgements was to be passed, the families of the defendants were dressed in their very best. Dressed in what one would think of as a festive kebaya, it seem to speak of hope for something good to come. (I'm not trying to dramatize the whole incident, but this was what I saw). Yet, there was no weeping when the judgement was passed for "hang until dead". It was as if they knew what was to come.

The case I saw years back parallels the Amara Tochi case in that there was no direct evidence that the defendant knew that they were carrying any illegal substance, only that they should have known better. Look at it another way, a person may be unaware that he was carrying illegal substances (or delivering them), but only that he should have known better than to carry them. And for that, the death penalty is imposed upon them. I may need someone to explain to me the logic of the argument.

As Gayle remarks on her blog,

"That leads us to a troublesome and haunting question: can you be sentenced to death for drug trafficking without even knowing you were in possession of drugs?" (that was the same question I asked myself 5 years ago)

With all due respect for Justice Kan Ting Chiu, I too question the validity, the logic and the integrity of our death penalty. I've been quite neutral on the grounds of the death penalty, and if anything, I have usually weighed the cost and benefits of it from a particularly economic standpoint rather than on the moral high ground that human rights activists advocate. But the questionable way in which such proceedings were carried out does make cause for concern.

What can we then learn? The most practical; always check what you're delivering and make sure you safe-lock your bags on trips. But more importantly, the most ideal; to my lawyer friends, it will always be easy for us to lose sight of what our ideals were as we embark on our respective future careers, but I do hope that you'll not lose sight of what it means to serve in a court of law, and if one day you were to pass a judgement over a defendant, I hope that it is with great caution and measure.

:: Stuffy 2/28/2007 05:11:00 PM [+] ::
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I'm not exactly sure if my bond was a discount ticket to a escaping reality for abit and whether my realising this soon enough will enable me a buffer year to think through what I'm going to do when I get back (which should be simple given the narrow path I've signed myself into). This is becoming more complicated than I would actually expect in terms of a whole realm of other issues. I suppose the mundane task of having to finish the molehill of work has led me to think more seriously about this from time to time (that is if I ever had much time to think.)

Today, I'm rebelling against the hour and typing in an entry which I would probably count as a waste of my time minutes later when I think of the opportunity cost of what I am actually forgoing - my sleep. I'm suppose to be in bed by 1am so that I could get up at 9am and use Kai Wei's gym card while he goes away to Dublin. I wouldn't have mind if he had given me his ticket to Dublin instead of his gym pass. I need a break, but not so soon, not until I'm done with another couple of essays, some problem set and a second research draft, not forgetting sending in the rest of my applications. Once I'm done, I'll be in Florida.

In any case, I still haven't reconciled this issue: If you see someone less fortunate on the street, say the blind uncle who plays at the orchard underpass you're likely to leave some loose change. Why is it that we'd rarely help someone who reeks of alcohol asking for loose change the street. Could it be that we assumed that he didn't try his best to help himself first. We assume, and sometimes 80% may be true, that our money will probably go into the alcohol fund than than something more agreeable. I raised this question in cell finding it hard to reconcile this with my Faith - that I shouldn't discriminate when it comes to compassion. Compassion really should be without conditionality. So why oh why do I hesitate to help those who don't help themselves first and tend to free ride, there is simply no moral ground (or biblical ground) to justify such.

:: Stuffy 2/12/2007 05:55:00 PM [+] ::
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