Eddie Lee Zheng Da v PUBLIC PROSECUTOR

Facts

Lee Zheng Da Eddie bought drugs from suppliers in Malaysia, kept some for himself and sold the rest. On 4 July 2018, from a room at the Pan Pacific Singapore hotel, he arranged for his customer Yap Peng Keong Darren, a private hire driver, to collect a delivery at 28/30 Gul Avenue. Lee gave Yap $16,000 in cash to hand over. Yap paid a motorcyclist and received three newspaper-wrapped bundles of heroin and two blocks of cannabis, then brought the drugs back to the hotel room, where Lee weighed the bundles before Central Narcotics Bureau officers arrested them. The three bundles held not less than 1352.8g of substance containing 24.21g of diamorphine.

Lee was convicted of possession for the purpose of trafficking and, not qualifying for the alternative regime, received the mandatory death sentence. Yap was convicted of trafficking by delivering the bundles to Lee and, as a courier with a certificate of substantive assistance, was sentenced to life imprisonment and 15 strokes of the cane. Lee appealed against conviction and sentence in CA/CCA 29/2022, arguing that his supplier had mistakenly sent him twice the heroin he ordered. Yap appealed against sentence in CA/CCA 30/2022, also raising points going to conviction.

Issues

1. Whether Lee proved on a balance of probabilities that he had been oversupplied and intended to traffic only half the heroin.
2. Whether an adverse inference was rightly drawn from Lee's failure to mention the oversupply in his cautioned statement.
3. Whether Yap rebutted the presumption of knowledge under s 18(2) of the Misuse of Drugs Act, and whether the capital charge against him breached Art 12(1) of the Constitution.
4. Whether either sentence could be disturbed on appeal.

Holding

The Court of Appeal dismissed both appeals. Lee's conviction and mandatory death sentence were upheld, as were Yap's conviction and his sentence of life imprisonment and 15 strokes of the cane.

Reasoning

On Lee's appeal, the burden lay on him to rebut the presumption of trafficking under s 17(c) by proving the oversupply defence on a balance of probabilities. His first account denied any involvement and blamed Yap as the supplier, and he switched only after the disclosed messages exposed that lie. The call to his supplier at 9.59pm proved nothing about its contents, and he had kept the investigators from accessing the relevant phones by giving a password that did not work and lying about not remembering another. Yap's account about returning cannabis to Bendemeer or Kallang, which Lee relied on as support, was admitted by Yap at trial to be a lie. There was no evidence of the three customer orders he described. Most tellingly, the $16,000 Lee sent matched the price of the full quantity collected, and his shifting explanations for the payment suggested the defence was made up.

The court rejected Lee's explanations for raising the defence late, namely that he believed it made no difference to a capital charge and that his mind was affected by drugs, for which there was no medical evidence. As he had been warned before the cautioned statement and instead blamed Yap, the adverse inference under s 261 of the Criminal Procedure Code was amply justified. The trial judge had not given undue weight to Yap's evidence. Trafficking more than 15g of diamorphine carries the mandatory death penalty, and Lee did not qualify for the alternative regime.

On Yap's appeal, his statement that he did not intend to traffic "to the market" merely restated his undisputed courier role. A bare claim of ignorance cannot rebut s 18(2), and choosing not to check bundles he knew were drugs showed indifference rather than any positive belief. His complaint about the capital charge failed because he identified no comparable offender, and his co-accused faced the same charge, so no Art 12(1) issue arose. There was no legal basis to call his sentence excessive, as life imprisonment and 15 strokes was the mandatory sentence once the judge exercised the discretion in s 33B not to impose death.

From the judgment