PUBLIC PROSECUTOR v CHAN JUN HONG

Facts

Chan Jun Hong, born on 6 April 2002, pleaded guilty to voluntarily causing grievous hurt under section 323A of the Penal Code 1871. According to the admitted Statement of Facts, he had been drinking and, while leaving the Casino at Marina Bay Sands in the early hours of 23 June 2023, got into a brief scuffle with an unknown man. Wanting to retaliate, he waited near the glass doors leading to the taxi stand. When a 58-year-old man, Davidov Aharon, walked out at about 2.53am, the respondent, in his drunken state, mistook him for the other man and punched him near the right eye, fracturing his right orbital floor and right frontal sinus. He tried to hit the victim again but was held back.

The District Court called for a probation suitability report and, accepting its recommendations, placed him on supervised probation for 15 months with a curfew, 80 hours of community service and a $5,000 bond signed by his parents. It found that he had shown an extremely strong propensity for reform. The Prosecution appealed in Magistrate's Appeal No 9124 of 2025, and the probation order was stayed pending the appeal. The respondent had been enlisted for National Service on 4 July 2024.

Issues

1. Whether the respondent, an adult offender, had demonstrated an extremely strong propensity for reform.
2. Whether rehabilitation should displace deterrence as the dominant sentencing consideration for this offence.
3. What sentence should replace the probation order if it was set aside.

Holding

The High Court allowed the Prosecution's appeal against sentence. The probation order was set aside and replaced with two months' imprisonment, which the respondent chose to begin serving at once, with effect from 24 April 2026.

Reasoning

On propensity for reform, the court accepted that National Service appeared to have helped the respondent's maturity and discipline, and admitted a letter from his superior commending his conduct. But it pointed to two conflicting signals about his honesty. He had given the probation officer an account that contradicted the admitted facts, suggesting he waited to demand an apology and backed off at once after the punch, which the court saw as an attempt to minimise the offence. He had also told his trainer that he had kept a promise not to drink at all, yet the probation report recorded him as still drinking on special occasions. The court concluded he did not appear to have come to terms with his drinking, which was the apparent catalyst for the attack, and was not satisfied of an extremely strong propensity for reform.

On the dominant consideration, the court held that the offence would not justify replacing deterrence with rehabilitation in any event. It was an unprovoked attack on an innocent stranger, carried out after the respondent had waited some time to take revenge for a minor incident in which he was not without fault. He had time to cool down and did not. The court also disagreed with the Prosecution's view that his intoxication was neutral, noting that case law treats voluntary intoxication leading to an offence as aggravating, not mitigating.

On sentence, the Prosecution had sought at least 12 to 14 weeks' imprisonment under the framework in Ang Boon Han v Public Prosecutor [2024] 5 SLR 754, while the defence asked for the probation order to stand or for a shorter term. The court said it would have imposed four months' imprisonment after a trial, and reduced this to two months for the early plea of guilt and the respondent's progress during National Service.

From the judgment