Execution of Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam
Nagaenthran a/l K. Dharmalingam was a Malaysian drug trafficker who was convicted of trafficking 42.72 grams of heroin in April 2009 upon entering Singapore from Malaysia at Woodlands Checkpoint with a bundle of heroin strapped to his thigh. Nagaenthran confessed to committing the crime, but gave statements claiming that he was ordered to commit the crime out of duress by a mastermind who assaulted him and threatened to kill his girlfriend and his family. He also claimed he did so to get money to pay off his debts before he later denied any knowledge of the contents of his bundle.
Nagaenthran was sentenced to death by hanging in November 2010. However, his execution was put on hold due to a moratorium placed on all hangings in Singapore pending judicial changes of the mandatory death penalty laws, which considered and approved the imposition of life imprisonment with or without caning for drug traffickers who were couriers or had mental illnesses. Despite Nagaenthran's multiple appeals, he was assessed as ineligible for re-sentencing because he was found not substantially mentally or intellectually disabled, which was also confirmed by the psychiatrists called upon by his lawyers.
Nagaenthran also lost his appeal for clemency, and he was finally scheduled to hang on 10 November 2021 after spending 11 years on death row. However, due to both a last-minute appeal and a COVID-19 infection, Nagaenthran's execution was suspended for five months, until the dismissal of his appeal on 29 March 2022. After this, Nagaenthran was hanged at Changi Prison on 27 April 2022; he was 33.
Prior to Nagaenthran's execution, his case attracted international attention, with many activists and foreign organizations asking for Singapore to commute Nagaenthran's death sentence to life imprisonment due to his alleged low IQ and overall, to abolish the death penalty while condemning Singapore for its use of the death penalty on drug traffickers. The government of Singapore, in response to these pleas, asserted that Nagaenthran was not substantially mentally or intellectually impaired and hence there was no basis for the government to intervene and commute Nagaenthran's death sentence.
Background and early life
Nagaenthran a/l K. Dharmalingam, an ethnic Indian Malaysian and native of Ipoh, was born on 13 September 1988. He was the second of four children and had two younger brothers and an elder sister Sharmila. His father died sometime during Nagaenthran's death row imprisonment in Singapore.According to the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network's video interview of Nagaenthran's mother Panchalai Supermaniam, she often went out for work and had to entrust Nagaenthran and his siblings to the care of the children's grandmother and their relatives during his childhood. After Nagaenthran got older, Panchalai would be the one taking care of him but she did not speak to him much due to her work. Nagaenthran completed his five-year secondary school education at age 17 and he went to work at a factory.
Later, Nagaenthran decided to go to Singapore to find employment, against the wishes of his family, especially his mother who did not want him to leave his hometown for a distant place. Nagaenthran found a job as a security guard in Singapore and would regularly visit his family in Ipoh. According to his sister, he last returned to Malaysia and visited his family in 2008 during Deepavali, and this was the final time he stepped foot in his hometown before his arrest for drug trafficking.
Arrest and trial
On 22 April 2009, 20-year-old Nagaenthran was arrested by the Central Narcotics Bureau officers when he was travelling from Malaysia to Singapore through the Woodlands Checkpoint. During a search of Nagaenthran and his belongings, the police discovered a bundle strapped to Nagaenthran's thigh, and the bundle contained a total amount of 42.72 g of diamorphine. A friend and travelling partner of Nagaenthran, named Kumarsen, was also arrested but later released. Upon his arrest, Nagaenthran admitted to his interrogators that he knew he was carrying drugs and it was for a Chinese friend, whom he called "King", who strapped the drugs to his thigh so that no one would find it. Nagaenthran also claimed that he needed money to pay off his debts and his father's heart surgery fees, which was why he committed the crime.Later, Nagaenthran retracted his confession and denied having knowledge of the contents of the bundle of drugs found on him. He also later claimed that King had earlier assaulted him and threatened to kill his girlfriend should he not comply with King's demands to transport the drugs. Nevertheless, due to his arrest and the amount of heroin having exceeded the lower limit for the death penalty, 15 g, Nagaenthran was charged with capital drug trafficking, which, if found guilty, is punishable by death.
Nagaenthran was tried and found guilty on 22 November 2010 of drug trafficking and sentenced to death by hanging. The High Court's judge Chan Seng Onn did not accept Nagaenthran's defence that he was under duress at the time he committed the crime, and ruled that Nagaenthran should assume full responsibility of his criminal conduct, since he did so to discharge his debts. His appeal was dismissed on 27 July 2011 by the Court of Appeal's three judges Chan Sek Keong, V. K. Rajah and Andrew Phang.
Appeals for re-sentencing
Legal changes and re-sentencing application
A year after Nagaenthran's appeal was dismissed, Singapore decided to amend its death penalty laws in July 2012, which designated a moratorium on all 35 executions in Singapore, including Nagaenthran's. The amendments, which took effect in January 2013, empowered all judges in Singapore with the discretion to sentence a drug trafficker to life imprisonment with caning not less than 15 strokes instead of death if he was merely a courier, on the condition that the public prosecutor issues the offender a certificate of substantive assistance — for helping the narcotics police to disrupt drug trafficking activities. Another alternative condition to receive life imprisonment was diminished responsibility; had any mental illnesses been diagnosed and found to have substantially impaired one's mental faculties, the offender would have been ineligible for the death sentence and caning would also not be given.When the new death penalty laws took effect in January 2013, Nagaenthran applied for re-sentencing on account of clinical intellectual disability and mental illness, and his case was sent back to the original trial judge Chan Seng Onn for review in the High Court. However, a psychiatric report concluded that Nagaenthran had neither of the above. He was also not issued a certificate of substantive assistance by the CNB, since he did not substantively assist them in disrupting the drug trafficking activities. Despite this, on 24 February 2015, Nagaenthran brought forward the application and tried to ask for mercy based on the conditions of an intellectual disability, low IQ, impaired executive functioning and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which would have made him ineligible for the death penalty.
High Court reviews
In 2017, the High Court dismissed Nagaenthran's re-sentencing application. Four psychiatric and psychological experts, including one called by the defence, agreed that Nagaenthran was not intellectually disabled. The High Court also found that Nagaenthran had repeatedly changed "his account of his education qualifications, ostensibly to reflect lower educational qualifications each time he was interviewed". The High Court found that Nagaenthran showed that he was "capable of manipulation and evasion" during his offence, as Nagaenthran tried to dissuade Central Narcotics Bureau officers from searching him at the checkpoint by stating that he was "working in security", playing into the "social perception of the trustworthiness of security officers."In 2018, the High Court dismissed another appeal of Nagaenthran's case.
Court of Appeal review
After the High Court dismissed Nagaenthran's appeal for re-sentencing, Nagaenthran, through his lawyer Eugene Thuraisingam, filed two separate appeals to ask for the Court of Appeal to commute his sentence under the newly enacted death penalty laws, but the five-judge Court of Appeal dismissed both appeals on 27 May 2019. The Court of Appeal said that there were numerous inconsistencies in Nagaenthran's account of his crime, which made it hard to rely on his defence given that they affected his credibility. The five judges - Sundaresh Menon, Belinda Ang, Andrew Phang, Judith Prakash, and Chao Hick Tin - held that Nagaenthran may have a low IQ, but his mental responsibility for his offence was not substantially impaired. He was able to plan and organise on simpler terms, and was relatively adept at living independently.Besides, Nagaenthran had known that it was unlawful for him to import heroin, and hid the drugs to avoid detection. He was also prone to being manipulative and evasive, as shown from his initial attempts to avoid being searched before the narcotics officers arrested him in 2009. Additionally, he was earlier found to have done this with the intention of paying off some of his debts, and his actions were deliberate, calculated and purposeful, which was "the working of a criminal mind" and was able to weigh the benefits and risks, and the concept of right or wrong. Hence, Nagaenthran lost his final bid to be re-sentenced.
Clemency petition and first public attention
Nagaenthran later appealed to the President of Singapore Halimah Yacob for clemency, which would have commuted his sentence to life imprisonment if successful, but his plea was rejected on 1 June 2020, which finalized his death sentence. The last time clemency was granted in Singapore was in 1998, when 19-year-old Mathavakannan Kalimuthu was pardoned from execution despite being sentenced to hang for murdering a gangster in 1996. Mathavakannan was paroled and released in 2012 after serving 16 years of his life sentence due to good behaviour.During the time Nagaenthran was appealing for clemency, his case attracted international attention and many who opposed the death penalty asked Singapore to spare Nagaenthran's life; Nagaenthran's mother Panchalai Supermaniam and family also joined in the efforts to plead for mercy. In a 2019 news report, Malaysian human rights lawyer N Surendran denounced Singapore for unfairly subjecting a mentally disabled man to a death sentence, and he, together with Nagaenthran's new lawyer M Ravi argued that there was no fair trial for Nagaenthran since his defence's psychiatric evidence was allegedly not fully considered compared to the reports of the prosecution's psychiatrists.
Singapore's law minister K Shanmugam, in light of prior accusations that Singapore was unfairly mistreating Malaysian drug traffickers, argued that there is no inequality in treating foreigners and locals under the law for drug trafficking. He said the majority of Singaporeans favour the death penalty and it would be good for both sides if drug traffickers were caught by Malaysian authorities, as the offenders could be dealt with according to Malaysia's laws and not have to worry about Singapore's capital punishment. Shanmugam emphasised that there should be no special treatment for Malaysian death row prisoners as it would undermine the integrity of Singapore's law.