Cheong Chun Yin
Cheong Chun Yin is a Malaysian former death row convict who is currently serving a life sentence in Singapore for drug trafficking. He and a female accomplice were both convicted of trafficking of 2,726g of heroin into Singapore from Myanmar in 2008, and sentenced to death by hanging in 2010. Cheong submitted multiple unsuccessful appeals against his sentence; his case, similar to Yong Vui Kong's, received much attention in the media, at a time when activists argued for Singapore to abolish the death penalty.
When changes to the law allowed the courts in 2013 to give out life sentences to drug convicts who were only acting as drug mules or suffering from mental illnesses, Cheong applied for re-sentencing. Being not certified as a courier, he was initially ineligible for re-sentencing and tried to fight for said certification. After new information was discovered, he was certified as a courier, with his death sentence being commuted to life imprisonment with 15 strokes of the cane in April 2015. Similarly, his accomplice, who suffered from depression at the time of the offence, was also re-sentenced to life imprisonment.
Early life
Born on 7 September 1983, Cheong Chun Yin was the eldest child and son out of four children - two sons and two daughters - in his family. He was born in Perak, Malaysia. Cheong and his family moved to Johor Bahru, where Cheong grew up and went to school. Cheong completed his primary and secondary school education, and at age 17, he graduated and thus started working with his father, making a living by selling legitimate and pirated DVDs at a stall. Of all the four children, Cheong was his father’s most favourite child, and the closest to him.In 2002, Cheong’s father Cheong Kah Pin and his wife divorced, and Cheong and his only brother lived with his father while the daughters’ custody rights were given to Cheong’s mother. Eventually, Cheong Chun Yin became the only one out of his four siblings to remain with their father. Since young, Cheong wanted to become a policeman, but it was due to his family’s break-up which led to Cheong unable to fulfill his dream, and this may have also influenced him to trafficking drugs.
Crime and court proceedings
Arrest and trial
On 16 June 2008, 24-year-old Cheong Chun Yin was arrested by the Central Narcotics Bureau at Arab Street in Singapore, after the police received information that he allegedly passed a bag containing heroin to another person. Cheong was thus charged with drug trafficking. Under the Misuse of Drugs Act, should one traffick at least 15g of heroin, he/she will face the death penalty in Singapore. At the same time, Cheong’s 54-year-old accomplice Pang Siew Fum, a Malaysian, was captured in Toa Payoh, after Cheong passed her a bag containing around 2.726 kg of diamorphine at Changi Airport after he arrived in Singapore from Myanmar. There were also 5 kg of heroin found packed in two more bags inside Pang's HDB flat at Toa Payoh, where she and her Singaporean husband Chow Yoke Jee lived.Cheong and Pang were later brought to trial together in the High Court of Singapore before one of its judges Choo Han Teck. Pang was represented by prominent lawyer Subhas Anandan and his two associates Irving Choh and Lim Bee Li, while Cheong was represented by both Ramesh Tiwary and Adrian Chong in his defence.
Cheong stated in his testimony that in 2006 he first met one of his regular customers, a man named Lau De, at his Malaysia’s disc stall. After knowing Lau De for two to three months, Cheong enquired about his line of business and even asked Lau De if there was any quick way to make money. Lau De replied that he was engaged in smuggling gold bars, thereby evading taxes. Cheong said that he did not believe Lau De at that time, thinking it would not be so easy to carry out such illegal activities. Later, after Lau De introduced to him a friend, who was decked in gold accessories, when he patronise his stall in March 2008, Cheong believed that Lau De was a gold smuggler and he thus accepted an offer to smuggle gold from Lau De two months later, which led to him travelling to Myanmar and later to Singapore where he received a bag from a middleman. The bag, Cheong said, was checked by him but he did not find drugs and only felt something hard in its interior sides and thus assumed they were gold. For this, the lawyers of Cheong argued that Cheong had no knowledge of the drugs and thus he should not be held liable to drug trafficking charges based on the presumption that he knew he was carrying drugs.
Pang, who worked as an assistant at her sister’s pork stall in Malaysia and also engaged in illegal booking, gave a similar account, in which she said she thought she was transporting valuables like penchants but not drugs. She said that a man called Teng Mor, whom she owed money since the 1990s, told her to help him deliver some valuables, which consisted of jade, blue sapphire, red ruby, diamonds and also Buddha pendants in a luggage, and she should be paid $5,000 for the job. She made a cursory check but could not find them. Nonetheless, she did not report to Teng Mor that the articles she was told to deliver were not in the suitcases, which happened to contain the heroin she was alleged to have delivered. After this, she was told by Teng Mor to meet up with Cheong, which led to their meeting at the airport and by then, Pang was already under the surveillance of the narcotics officers and this surveillance also contributed to her arrest, as well as Cheong's.
Sentence and appeals
On 4 February 2010, Justice Choo Han Teck found both Pang and Cheong guilty of drug trafficking. In a short, two-page written verdict, Justice Choo stated that both may argue that they did not know they were carrying drugs and assumed they were carrying valuables, but it was not believable from both Pang and Cheong’s accounts and claims. There was no alarm raised about the possibility of the bags not containing their intended contents when they checked and they could not have not noticed the drugs contained in the baggage if they were really unaware of drugs being present. It was likely that both of them were wilfully blind and told lies about not noticing they were carrying heroin, and thus they should be guilty of drug trafficking. In Cheong’s case, while he did provide details of the man “Lau De”, it was immaterial that the CNB did not make adequate efforts to trace “Lau De” or check on his cell-phones. Upon their conviction for drug trafficking, both Cheong and Pang were sentenced to death. Their appeals to the Court of Appeal of Singapore were later dismissed in November that same year. Cheong's application to reopen his concluded appeal for a re-trial was also rejected in October 2012.During the time Cheong was undergoing trial and facing the death penalty, his family, who were shocked to hear his arrest, tried ways to help plead for mercy on his behalf. This tragedy ironically brought the separated family and divorced couple back together in their common goal to save Cheong, with Cheong’s father Cheong Kah Pin playing the most prominent role in the efforts to seek reprieve. Cheong’s father was said to be distraught about the guilty verdict of death, and he received the support of activists who also jointly asked for mercy on the lives of Cheong and another high-profile drug trafficker Yong Vui Kong, a 19-year-old Malaysian youth from Sabah who was also sentenced to hang for drug trafficking, due to both of them having been lured into helping do the drug trafficking and their trust exploited. Cheong’s father also sold his house to pay for legal fees and relentlessly asked for signatures from members of the public. After gathering 8,778 signatures, Cheong's parents and siblings all knelt outside the Istana in order to pass a personal letter to the President of Singapore S R Nathan for clemency on Cheong Chun Yin. The clemency appeal was later turned down on the advice of the Cabinet to the president.
Legal reforms and reprieve
Failed re-sentencing application and legal challenges
In July 2012, the Singapore government began its review of the death penalty laws, and they decided to initiate reforms, which took effect on 1 January 2013. Among the reforms introduced, those who are convicted of drug trafficking would not face execution if they were merely acting as couriers and had substantively assisted the authorities to fight drug related activities, or if they were suffering from mental illnesses at the time of their offences, and they would only face life imprisonment for their criminal conduct. All death row inmates who were found guilty of drug trafficking were given a chance to review their cases for re-sentencing and Cheong Chun Yin was allowed a chance to reopen his case. The reforms allowed Cheong’s fellow Malaysian and drug mule Yong Vui Kong to become the first drug courier to escape the death penalty and received life imprisonment and 15 strokes of the cane. While they rejoiced and welcomed the reprieve given to Yong, both the anti-death penalty groups Singapore Anti-Death Penalty Campaign and We Believe In Second Chances continued to advocate against Cheong's death sentence and argued that like Yong, Cheong rightfully deserves life imprisonment instead of death.However, unlike Yong, Cheong Chun Yin remained on death row as the public prosecutor reviewed his case in November 2013 and found him ineligible for re-sentencing as he did not satisfy the criteria of a drug courier under Singapore’s revised death penalty laws for drug trafficking, given that he did not provide substantive assistance to the prosecution or authorities to tackle drug trafficking. His mental responsibility was not impaired according to psychiatric assessments, which would not make Cheong eligible for life imprisonment either. Hence, through his new lawyer M Ravi, Cheong went on to initiate a legal lawsuit to fight for certification as a courier. His lawsuit in June 2014 against the attorney general was later rejected by the High Court, and Ravi also had a complaint filed against him by the prosecution for releasing court documents to the media, which may potentially hinder fairness in the court proceedings. This case spurred the Malaysian government to appeal to Singapore for mercy on Cheong's life. There were also calls to investigate further on the information that Cheong had provided about the alleged mastermind "Lau De" who sent him to deliver drugs.