Posts on Mandatory Death Penalty laws

(An old post on the onlinecitizen by Robert Teh) It is good not to remove all the important posts on subjects like this. See, for years under the one-party one-man autocratic rule government has been catching only small flies in anti-corruption laws and drug laws. The big-time offenders causing big financial and security threats to the country are not really being caught. The ignorant youths become fall guys many of whom were being tricked into carrying drugs believing the packages were gold bars or such-like objects. If a government is truly interested in being effective, it should have targeted the drug laws principally at eliminating the root cause of problems – syndicates and drug lords some of whom were even closely connected to governments. (read escape from paradise site) Though the government may not want to admit or acknowledge, netizens at TOC have been criticizing the ineffective drug laws which should have targeted at eliminating the root cause not fall guys who might be people like Yong Vui King or some others as posted. At least because of netizens’ parts the AG Chambers now appear to realize injustices in our high-handed presumptuous drug laws (read Straits Times report on deferred prosecution of offenders) and would now allow holding back of prosecution by way of deferred prosecution subject to conditons to be fulfilled where there are evidences from among caught offenders of syndicates at work. This kind of injustices appear to have gone unnoticed under the existing one-man and one-party rule as none of the MPs appear to be willing to go against the autocratic laws and policies of such nature. In the same way, injustices were being caused to many innocent people under the ISA another strong autocratic law of one-man one-party rule. AG Chambers should have awakened to the possibilities of innocent offenders being victimized as fall guys by cunning drug syndicates and use the deferred prosecution agreement to hold back and try to catch drug lords or their syndicates instead of all these youthful or even stupid kids like Yong Vui Kong. ...... Reproduced from a post at Yahoo site: APPEAL TO PRESIDENT TONY TAN FOR CLEMENCY BY DRUG OFFENDER YONG VUI KONG Go and read the thorough debates at theonlinecitizen.com on the appeal by Yong Vui Kong. Those who insisted that Singapore should continue to hang drug traffickers have only two substantial points in their favor – drug trafficking is extremely harmful to society and death penalty will deter trafficking. Some apparently well-informed pro-death penalty have given their views both technical and from the point of view of justice and equity. In particular, they strongly pointed out there is no injustice because the whole process of prosecuting the offenders is an world-wide judiciary process where it is up to the prosecution to contend its case with the defence on the principle of adversarial argumentation with the judge giving the final verdict. Upon finally being made to realize that under the Misuse of Drug Act, the judges concerned have no leeway to decide on the mitigation aspect of people who might be in the category like Yong Vui Kong and another who might not be fully aware either due to age, or mistaken knowledge the substance carried was something else like gold bar, the two experts who might be from CNB or prosecution department agreed with me that this lack of discretionary power by the judge to consider mitigation makes the Misuse of Drug Act unfair and needs to be amended with attention focused on catching the syndicate and drug lords rather than sending peripherial cases like ignorant or stupid people to hang with the judges being unable to do anything to consider mitigation due to certain mitigating circumstances. Lately as a result probably of such inputs AG chamber has finally passed a procedure to defer prosecution against an accused where there exist from collective evidences of other prisoners of syndicate behind certain cases. For those who insisted that there should be retention of death penalty they should rest assure that their interests in safeguarding society against harm of drug trafficking is not compromised as few including myself disagree with their views. In the current form of our drug law, innocent or stupid youths are being hanged while drug syndicates and bosses are able to continue their lucrative trades unabated, The current law is not deterrent at all while young and stupid people some of whom may be any casual travellers like you and me who are careless enough with luggage left accidentally open for drug syndicates to explore for their own devious trickeries to traffic drugs. It is timely for president Tony Tan to wake up the whole government and cabinet who might not be too inclined to be fair or just by making a move towards fair prosecution of drug offenders aiming at eliminating source of drug rather than getting whoever they can catch as fall guys. .............. (as posted in facebook on 5.11.12)Apparently minister Shanmugam has decided to take all the credit for changes to the mandatory death sentences to himself by saying that the change was not brought about by the lobbyists. He should read my old posts at the onlinecitizen where as a result of pointing out that the judges had often lamented that their hands are tied because parliament has decided on mandatory death sentence that they were unable to consider the many cases of mitigations being pleaded. Following the boo-boos in certain cases, being brought up in the onlinecitizen, and replies of lobo76 and lockeliberal being rebutted into admitting the laws were unjust, AG was pressurized into granting deferral in prosecution of certain drug mules on certain conditions. Is Minister Shanmugam telling us the truth when he said that government changed these laws because of its own reviewing process. ................ (J.'s post in yahoo) hi Robert, how does one search up older posts in The Online Citizen? they used to have it by sub-topics, in a list form which is further divided into pages. the new layout limits to highlighted titles with the older 1s being "dropped off"....