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| Yong Vui Kong |
SINGAPORE - In what is his third bid in the highest court of the land to escape the gallows, drug trafficker Yong Vui Kong yesterday argued that his life should be spared because his drug boss had not been similarly punished by the law, despite being a more culpable offender.
Yong, 23, had pointed the finger at Chia Choon Leng as the mastermind of a drug syndicate which instigated him, when he was just 19, to bring into the Republic 42.27g of heroin in 2007.
After Chia was arrested, prosecutors pressed 26 charges - including at least one capital charge - against Chia but subsequently withdrew all of them, citing difficulty with the evidence in securing a conviction. Chia was granted a discharge not amounting to an acquittal but has been detained under the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act, which allowed for members of secret societies and crime syndicates to be held indefinitely without trial.
At the hearing in the Court of Appeal yesterday, Yong's lawyer M Ravi charged that what happened amounted to unequal treatment: Yong, a runner, is on death row but the mastermind of the drug syndicate is just detained.
Citing a recent press statement by the Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC) outlining the robust process by which it exercises prosecutorial discretion, Mr Ravi questioned how it was that Chia was eventually not tried when the AGC had taken the "serious" decision to charge him.
The issue of prosecutorial discretion emerged recently in drug trafficker Ramalingam Ravinthran's appeal against the death penalty after his accomplice was prosecuted on a non-capital charge.
Source: Singapore Law Watch, March 15, 2012
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