MASOUD RAHIMI BIN MEHRZAD & 30 Ors v ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF SINGAPORE

Facts

Thirty-one prisoners awaiting capital punishment filed Originating Application No 972 of 2024 seeking declarations that provisions introduced by the Post-appeal Applications in Capital Cases Act 2022 (PACC Act) were void for inconsistency with Arts 9 and 12 of the Constitution. The provisions challenged were ss 60G(7)(d), 60G(8), 60H(6) and 60I(1) of the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1969 and s 313(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code 2010. Together they require a prisoner to obtain the Court of Appeal's permission before making a post-appeal application, with one factor being a reasonable prospect of success; allow such matters to be dealt with summarily without an oral hearing; bar further applications while one is pending without permission; and allow a death sentence to be carried out despite a pending application where the prisoner was earlier found to have abused the court's process and lacks permission.

An earlier challenge by most of the same prisoners, OA 987, had been struck out for lack of standing, and the Court of Appeal had agreed because the provisions were not yet in force and had not affected them. The provisions came into force on 28 June 2024, and OA 972 was filed on 19 September 2024. Before the hearing, five of the applicants, including the lead applicant, were executed; four of them had applied for permission under the new regime after OA 972 was filed. The Attorney-General applied in Summons No 2898 of 2024 to strike out OA 972 for disclosing no reasonable cause of action.

Issues

1. At what point in time standing to bring the constitutional challenge is assessed.
2. Whether the applicants had standing to challenge the provisions.
3. Whether there was a viable claim that the provisions breach Art 9 of the Constitution.
4. Whether there was a viable claim that the provisions breach Art 12 of the Constitution.

Holding

Hoo Sheau Peng J granted the Attorney-General's application and struck out OA 972 in its entirety under O 9 r 16(1)(a) of the Rules of Court 2021, holding that the applicants lacked standing and that, in any event, their challenges had no chance of success.

Reasoning

Standing must first exist when the application is filed. Later events can remove standing, but cannot create it where there was no factual basis at the start. When OA 972 was filed, none of the applicants had made any application under the new regime, so none had been affected, and no real interest, real controversy or personal right was engaged. The provisions only prescribe a procedure; they do not extinguish rights. Unlike an offence-creating law, which can affect people before prosecution, procedural rules matter only when someone must follow them, as the Court of Appeal had said. The court declined to exercise any discretion to hear the case, noting that prisoners can raise constitutional points when seeking permission.

On Art 9, the judge found the challenge plainly hopeless. Permission filters and summary disposal are familiar features of the legal system, and finality matters especially after trial and appeal. A reasonable prospect of success is not a high threshold, and setting it is for Parliament. The Court of Appeal must consider the applicant's written submissions, and a fair hearing need not be oral. Applicants are expected to put their full case at the outset rather than drip-feed material. Before the regime, filing an application did not automatically stay an execution, and s 313(2) still requires that the prisoner lack permission before execution proceeds.

On Art 12, applying the more searching approach from Syed Suhail, the classifications were intelligible and rationally related to Parliament's aim of addressing last-minute applications after all appeals are exhausted. The comparison with non-capital prisoners' review applications was misplaced, since that separate procedure is equally open to capital prisoners. The judge also rejected points raised at the hearing about lack of legal representation, omitted parliamentary material, and the treatment of new evidence.

From the judgment