by Alex Josey
Justice Tan dismissed as ‘quite trivial’ a good number of the grounds of so-called bias on the part of the trial judge. “In one instance, however, it is clear that the learned trial judge was in error, when he stated in his summing up that both the appellant and the witness Henderson used an improvised washer during demonstrations in court. In fact, it was Henderson who used an improvised washer, while the appellant used a new Healthway washer in the course of another demonstration. In our view this was a slip of no great consequence made in the course of a long trial, and is no indication of bias on the part of the learned trial judge.”
The Acting Chief Justice said, “The appellant’s real intention was to murder Jenny, and in pursuance of that intention he assisted Jenny in putting on the diving equipment, which had been brought in the sampan and allowed her, a novice, to go down alone wearing a flipper, which had previously been cut, into waters which he knew were dangerous and hazardous, with the result that she met her death.”
Sunny Ang was driven back to Changi Jail. He was still confident he would not hang.
Appeal To Privy Council
More than a year was to elapse before Ang’s application for special leave to appeal to the Juridical Committee of the Privy Council could be heard. On 5 October 1966, Mr Ralph Millner Q.C. appeared before the Committee on his behalf.
Sunny Ang’s legal advisers decided to base their application principally on the ground that Justice Buttrose wrongfully allowed the prosecution to tender evidence of the road accident in which Ang, driving the car with Jenny as the passenger, was involved. Such evidence was ‘evidence of the res gestas, and also evidence of similar acts by the accused to rebut the defence of accident or mistake’.
The prosecution, they said, appeared to rely upon this evidence as showing a previous attempt by Sunny Ang to kill Jenny, although this suggestion was never put to him in terms in cross-examination, ‘and does not appear in terms anywhere in the learned trial judge’s summing up to the jury’.
Sunny Ang’s legal advisers argued that this car accident was not connected with, and was removed in time from, the matters which formed the subject matter of the charge against Ang, and could not be said to be part of the res gestas (or the alleged intention of Ang to kill Jenny).
They held that the alleged acts of Ang on the day of the road accident were not ‘similar acts’ to those that the prosecution alleged he did in the commission of the offence with which he was charged. The evidence relating to the motor car accident, they said, would not have been sufficient to sustain a charge of attempted murder: at its highest it could only have given rise to some suspicion against Sunny Ang.
Therefore, they submitted, this evidence was irrelevant and inadmissible, and, as it was put forward in effect as evidence of some other offence or misconduct on his part, was highly prejudicial to Ang’s defence. Furthermore, the prejudicial effect was so disproportionate to any possible evidential value that it ought to have been excluded in fairness to Ang. In any event, the judge, having ruled that the evidence was admissible gave the jury no direction whatsoever as to how it was to be treated or applied. They submitted that if the evidence was admissible at all, he should have directed the jury that, if they thought the occurrence might have been a pure accident, the evidence would be of no assistance to them, and they should also ignore it if it only gave rise to suspicion. The evidence would have been relevant to rebut a possible defence of accident only if they were satisfied that Ang tried to kill Jenny by deliberately causing the accident. They held that the evidence would not sustain such a conclusion.
Ang’s petition to the Privy Council also submitted that Justice Buttrose misdirected the jury as to the effect of circumstantial evidence, in particular as to the way the jury should consider and evaluate the evidence relied upon by the prosecution as showing Sunny Ang’s guilt. Justice Buttrose had said that it was the cumulative effect of the evidence that was important not one isolated link in the chain of circumstantial evidence. He said it would be wrong to consider the case link by link, and reject any one link being by itself as too weak.
While the petitioners did not dispute that such a direction would be proper in a case ‘in which all the pieces of the circumstantial evidence are directed to show that an accused committed the particular act or was responsible for the particular omission which is relied upon as being the act of murder’, it was inappropriate and misleading where, as in Ang’s case, the prosecution alleged a number of acts or omissions, the cumulative effect of some, or all of which is relied upon as contributing the offence.
In Ang’s case, apart from evidence of motive or intention, and evidence as to subsequent conduct, which the prosecution relied upon as showing guilt, the prosecution case was that the death of Jenny was caused by:
· Ang taking her scuba-diving in what he knew were dangerous waters and when, as he knew, she was a novice scuba-diver;
· Ang cutting her flipper causing it to come off in the water and causing her to panic and to get into greater danger; and
· his delaying, on a false pretence, for some ten minutes, instead of himself diving in or joining her, or making any effort to rescue her.
In these circumstances the judge’s direction to the jury as to how circumstantial evidence should be regarded was wrong. It was incumbent upon him to consider separately the various acts and omissions for which Ang was alleged to be responsible, and which taken together, made up the alleged crime. Instead, the judge invited the jury to lump all the circumstantial evidence together. He should have brought to their minds that the various pieces of circumstantial evidence were directed respectively to various acts and omissions, the combination of which the prosecution relied upon as constituting the crime of murder.
The petition said that the ‘main ingredient in the alleged crime of murder’ was the cutting of Jenny’s flipper. Ang’s act of cutting it, they submitted, was strongly in issue, ‘and there was some evidence to support the defence contention that it could not have been cut by Sunny Ang at the time and manner suggested by the prosecution’. Had the judge directed the jury correctly on the weight and effect of circumstantial evidence, he would necessarily have invited the jury to consider how the case stood if they were not satisfied that Ang had in fact cut Jenny’s flipper. He should have directed the jury in this context: that they should be satisfied that Ang induced or persuaded Jenny to scuba-dive in dangerous waters and so caused her death. The petition also argued that there was no direct evidence that Ang ever persuaded or induced Jenny to go to the particular spot where she made the dive from which she did not return. There was no direct evidence that Ang cut her flipper.
The petition complained that the Appeals Court followed the learned trial judge in taking the prosecution’s evidence as a whole, instead of distinguishing the various pieces of evidence in relation to the different acts or omission which the prosecution said constituted the offence of murder. “The cutting of the strap of the flipper, either by Ang or with his knowledge, must necessarily have been evidence in a different category.” The Appeals Court, the petition pointed out, said “Ang ‘allowed’ Jenny to go down into waters which he knew were dangerous.” For all these matters complained of, submitted Ang’s legal advisers, he had suffered ‘substantial and grave injustice’, and in consequence Ang petitioned for special leave to appeal against the judgment of the Appeals Court.
The petition was denied.
Psychopath
ANG WAS A PSYCHOPATH. Two psychiatrists came to this conclusion after examining him in Changi Jail,
Dr Wong Yip Chong, then the government psychiatrist, saw Ang five times in 16 days in October 1966. He also interviewed his father, mother, sister and two of the brothers, as well as several members of the public with close association with Ang in the past. Dr Wong found Ang in good physical condition, and noted that his intelligence quotient (IQ) was recorded as 128—within the superior intelligence range.
Ang had a good academic record and was among th
e first 10 in the primary classes and maintained these positions to the secondary level except when he finished at the bottom of the class through playing truant. He completed his Senior Cambridge in 1955, and obtained distinctions in English and Science, and a C3 for Mathematics, thereby obtaining a Grade I certificate. This was obtained with the minimum of effort. Ang claimed that he never studied until the last two weeks of the examination. According to his form master, Maurice Baker, later to become Singapore’s first High Commissioner to India (now professor of English at the University of Singapore), Ang was a fairly quiet boy but bright, and with a great sense of adventure. “If there were a war, he would have distinguished himself.” He was apparently a likeable boy, though conceited. His school records show his conduct to have been good.
In early 1956 he went to work with Dunlops, but resigned after three months in anticipation of discovery by the company of his having ‘irresponsibly and improperly’ diverted some of the company’s products to his own home. He idled away the rest of the year, and in 1957 became a student teacher at Bedok Boys’ School for about six months. His conduct as a student teacher was deplorable. True to his philosophy of maximum results from minimum effort he would leave his pupils’ books to be corrected by his sister or mother. According to the records at the Teachers’ Training College, Sunny Ang was the only student never to attend any classes throughout the term. In 1958 he returned to teaching at St Thomas School, a private school, for one year. There his irresponsible behaviour continued. He was often away from his class. On one occasion he misappropriated school fees, though he later managed to return them to the school.
But in between these two periods of teaching, Ang had tried to become a commercial airline pilot. In May 1957 he was released by the Director of Education from his teacher-in-training course to train as an airline pilot with the aid of a Colombo Plan scholarship. He had always been interested in flying, and earlier that month (on 10 May 1957), he had qualified for his student pilot licence. He obtained his private pilot licence on 29 November, and passed his examinations for his Restricted Flight Radio and Telephone Operator’s Licence in May the following year.
This Colombo Plan scholarship training programme started off with six selected students, but only four were to be chosen for advanced training to commercial pilot level in India. In terms of efficiency, as reflected in the number of hours registered to qualify for solo flying, Ang ranked fourth with 13 hours. But he was not chosen. The fifth student, with over 20 hours, was chosen in his stead. Ang was greatly disappointed: he considered it a gross distortion of justice. He was determined to go on with his training in Singapore, and his mother pawned her jewellery, and borrowed money to enable him to do this. By the time he was finally grounded in May 1959 he had completed 139 flying hours: it had cost his mother nearly $5,000.
Ang admitted to Dr Wong that he had been involved in a number of irresponsible flying incidents, such as skimming over the water and the tops of coconut trees. He would come down low over house-tops to salute friends or a relative, or to look at girls sunbathing on the roof-tops.
Ang also admitted with nonchalance that he was an inveterate liar. His arrogance and his conceit were noted by Civil Aviation officials and his flying instructor. Ang was also over-confident, which is a dangerous disposition in flying. These were in fact the reasons why Ang was not selected for further training to commercial pilot level: an arrogant, conceited, over-confident person, given to irresponsible behaviour, does not often make a good pilot.
Ang was grounded in May 1959 following an emergency landing. He misread a compass and had run out of fuel. At the inquiry he lied and said he had a bird in his engine. This inaccurate explanation was not accepted, and he was not allowed to fly again. He should never have been allowed to fly in the first place because of defective eyesight. A friend took the first examination for him. The second he passed by learning the eye-chart by heart.
His hopes to become a commercial pilot dashed, Ang returned to teaching for about a year. Early in 1960 he became a chicken farmer. He cleared the land, built cages and reared thousands of chickens, and ducks as well for a time. He managed to make about $300 a month, and the farm thrived except when an epidemic wiped out almost all his stock. But he carried on, in spite of a financial loss, and in 1964 he also began to plant tomatoes. He was still farming when he was arrested and charged with Jenny’s murder.
Ang’s sex life seems to have been normal, if enthusiastic. He confessed to getting several girls into trouble: some of them had abortions. He told one girl he wanted to marry her and he induced her mother to lend him various sums of money totalling between $6,000 and $7,000. Much of this money he spent on paying for a Sunbeam sports car which he drove in the 1961 Singapore Grand Prix. When the girl’s mother realized his duplicity she made him a bankrupt. He was so enamoured with another girl that he would talk to her on the telephone when she was away for as long as two and a half hours at a time. He ran up telephone bills of $500 a month. His diary revealed that he had to sell about 200 chickens to settle these bills.
Ang liked girls, but not alcohol, and neither did he gamble. He never frequented night-clubs and he did not know how to dance. All his life he had few friends. Ang was faddish about food. He would never eat pork, the favourite meat of practically all the Chinese. He would eat no other meat than the meat of a chicken.
He was egocentric and vain. His physical health and appearance meant much to him. He would keep fit with a careful diet and regular physical exercises including running. Pimples would seriously upset him. He paid careful attention to his teeth. He was dissatisfied with himself for not being taller than five feet and six inches. For years he tried courses to get taller. He tried to improve his memory and his command of the English language. He was constantly striving to improve himself, physically and mentally.
His fondness for cars led him into trouble. He stole between $6,000 and $7,000 from his father, making the theft appear as though an outsider had taken the money. The police dismissed this possibility and a detective followed him to a car dealer where he was seen to hand over money and take possession of a car. The following day the receipt arrived home. Despite all this evidence, he flatly denied that he had stolen the money. An angry, miserable father drove him out of the house. Sunny went calmly and stayed away for a few days, coming back when his mother forgave him.
He was a skilful and fast driver, though shortly after the 1961 Grand Prix, driving the same Sunbeam he had raced in that event, he killed a pedestrian. He drove the car on to a road island. He claimed he was avoiding the man who, he said, had suddenly stepped onto the road. The coroner returned an open verdict. Ang was subsequently fined $30 for negligence.
At home, Sunny was obedient and helpful to his mother. He was the odd-job man in the house. He was kind to stray cats and dogs. Even during his trial he was concerned for a sick dog on the farm, and from the prison gave detailed instructions for its proper care.
There is ample evidence to show that Sunny Ang’s lying and thieving began at about the age of 10. The thefts started in his own home, then the homes of neighbours, and eventually in shops in the city and society at large. He was in his teens when he bought a set of oxyacetylene cutting instruments to better equip himself for future burglaries; but he sold them before he could use them, to help a friend who had lost his bicycle.
He stepped up his burglary activities after he was grounded from flying. He chose shops in the main shopping centres which were empty at night; he abhorred physical violence. At 1:00 AM in the morning of 12 July 1962, he was caught trying to burglarize a radio shop. David Marshall, Singapore’s foremost criminal lawyer, defended him and successfully saved him from a prison sentence, Ang being placed on probation. Staring at Mr Marshall coldly and with disdain (when counsel had expected a smile and a sigh of relief), Ang walked out of the dock without a word of thanks. He had apparently expected to be acquitted. That night David Marshall said to his wife, “Today I got a man off, and for the fi
rst time in 25 years’ practice at the Bar I will live to regret it.”
On probation, Ang worked hard on his farm, though he exasperated his probation officer. He also took stock of himself. He had left school seven years and had achieved very little. He would like to study law, and was confident that he could get a degree within 18 months if he went to Britain for his studies: but he did not have a Higher School Certificate. Nor the money to travel. He now felt that he would like to do well in society. “If I cannot beat them,” he told the psychiatrist, and by ‘them’ he meant the police, society, “then I will join them.” He probably remembered the words of his father the very morning of the day he was arrested in the radio shop. “Do not underestimate the ability and the power of the police,” his father had warned him. Ang made inquiries at the University of Singapore, but met with no encouragement. He read law books in his spare time. And then, sometime in 1963, his father introduced him to a friend, an insurance agent. Sunny began to sell insurance policies. It was about then that he conceived the murderous idea of a quick way to raise money to finance his trip to England to get his law degree.
Dr Wong came to the conclusion that in the legal sense Ang was not of unsound mind. He had no psychotic illness or insanity. There was no defect in his reasoning. In the context of the M’Naughten’s Rules for Criminal Responsibility he would be considered fully responsible for his actions.
As Ang was a psychopath, Dr Wong felt that the abnormality of his mind would be such as to have substantially impaired his mental responsibility. On medico-legal grounds he recommended a reprieve, but hastened to add that, with the facilities available in Singapore at that time, he saw little hope for a cure for Ang. He felt that a sentence of life imprisonment for Ang, ‘with his superior intelligence and his almost classical degree of psychopathy’, should mean what it says. “He is a dangerous person, if released prematurely. Ang has said simply but significantly, ‘I would do it again.’”
