Woo Bih Li | |
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吴必理 | |
Judge of the Supreme Court of Singapore | |
Assumed office 2 January 2003 | |
Appointed by | S. R. Nathan Halimah Yacob (2019,2021) |
Judicial Commissioner of Singapore | |
In office 2 May 2000 –2 January 2003 | |
Appointed by | S. R. Nathan |
Personal details | |
Born | December 31,1954 |
Nationality | Singaporean |
Alma mater | National University of Singapore |
Website | http://app.supremecourt.gov.sg/default.aspx?pgID=40#woobihli |
Woo Bih Li | |||||||
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Simplified Chinese | 吴必理 | ||||||
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Woo Bih Li SC is a Singaporean judge of the Supreme Court.
Woo received his Bachelor of Laws from the University of Singapore in 1977,and was admitted as an advocate and solicitor of the Supreme Court the following year. He joined the Singaporean law firm Allen &Gledhill in 1970 and in 1992,he established Bih Li &Lee in 1992,becoming its Managing Partner. Having been appointed Senior Counsel in 1997,he was appointed Judicial Commissioner in May 2000,and Judge of the Supreme Court in January 2003. [1]
In March 2003,during Woo Bih Li’s tenure as a judge,he presided the trial of Yen May Woen,a Singaporean hairdresser who was charged with trafficking 30.16g of diamorphine. He found that in contrast to Yen’s testimony that she never know about the drugs in her bag,evidence showed that Yen confessed to the narcotics officers that she was carrying the diamorphine in her bag after they caught her while she alighted a taxi at a Toa Payoh carpark. Yen was found guilty as charged,and she was sentenced to death by Woo after a seven-day trial. Yen lost her appeal and she was hanged on 19 March 2004. [2] [3] [4]
In July 2003,Woo found a jobless man guilty of murdering a six-month-old baby girl after the defendant,Soosainathan Dass Saminathan,raped the child inside his bedroom at his Hougang flat. Woo found that Soosainathan had indeed committed the crime based on the circumstantial evidence against him,despite his claims of innocence. Soosainathan was automatically sentenced to death upon his conviction for murder. After losing his appeal in September 2003,Soosainathan was hanged on 21 May 2004. [5] [6] [7] [8]
Woo was also the trial judge that heard the 2004 case of Harith Gary Lee,who was charged with killing his girlfriend Diana Teo Siew Peng by throwing her off the tenth floor of her Choa Chu Kang flat. Woo,who personally inspected the crime scene a month before delivering his verdict,rejected Lee's claims that the victim fell off the parapet on her own volition due to financial troubles,and found that he had intentionally pushed her off the parapet as corroborated by the witnesses who directly seen him committing the crime. Lee was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in April 2004,and he lost his appeal in September of that same year before he was hanged on 22 April 2005. [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]
From May 2005 to April 2006,Woo heard the case of G Krishnasamy Naidu,a taxi driver who armed himself with a chopper and nearly decapitated his wife Chitrabathy Narayanasamy in a horrific chopper attack right in front of her colleagues at her workplace. Chitrabathy was revealed to have several affairs with other males in the past and the suspected relationship between Chitrabathy and a security guard was what led to Krishnasamy killing his wife. It was also presented in court that Krishnasamy was suffering from morbid jealousy,a delusional disorder that made one suspect about the sexual unfaithfulness of his/her partner based on uncorroborated or circumstantial evidence and it formed his irrational beliefs over his wife allegedly cheating on him. Although Woo accepted at the end of the trial that Krishnasamy was indeed suffering from the illness,he disagreed that the disorder had substantially impaired Krishnasamy's mental responsibility at the time of the murder since he was able to elaborately plan his wife's murder and execute his plot,and thus he sentenced Krishnasamy to death after finding him guilty of murder. However,Woo's decision was ultimately overruled by the Court of Appeal,as they agreed that Krishnasamy was indeed suffering from diminished responsibility and his actions were a result of his irrational thoughts caused by morbid jealousy and thus,Krishnasamy's murder conviction and death sentence were both set aside and he was re-sentenced to life imprisonment for an amended charge of manslaughter. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]
From 2006 to 2009,Woo presided the 94-day murder trial of the Tham Weng Kuen murder case,in which two brothers were charged with murdering the 69-year-old victim in 2005. Woo found both brothers guilty and sentenced them to death. [19] [20] [21] However,upon appeal,the appellate court determined that only one of the brothers,Muhammad Kadar,was responsible for the killing while the other,Ismil Kadar,was innocent. Therefore,Ismil was acquitted and released,while Muhammad was eventually executed in April 2015. [22] [23] [24]
In March 2015,Woo presided the trial of Yap Weng Wah,a 30-year-old Malaysian engineer who faced 76 counts of raping 31 boys between the age of 11 and 14. Yap was diagnosed with hebephilia,a type of sexual preference for early adolescent children between 11 and 14 years of age. Woo noted that Yap demonstrated an aggravating criminal conduct and a high possibility of re-offending,and had an utter lack of remorse for his offences. Therefore,Woo sentenced Yap to 30 years' imprisonment and 24 strokes of the cane. [25] [26] [27] [28] [29]
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Eugene Singarajah Thuraisingam is a lawyer from Singapore. He is the founder of the law firm Eugene Thuraisingam LLP,a law firm that specialises in international arbitration and criminal and commercial litigation. He is also known for his advocacy of human rights and for his opposition of the death penalty in Singapore. In relation to his domestic practice as a criminal lawyer in Singapore,Thuraisingam has defended many alleged suspects in high profile criminal trials,including those who were dissidents and critics of the government of Singapore. For his legal service for many defendants in the court of Singapore,Doyles Guide has named him as a leading criminal defence lawyer in Singapore in 2020.
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Wong Weng Siu,more commonly known as Mimi Wong,was a Singaporean bar hostess who became the first woman to be sentenced to death for murder in Singapore since its independence. Wong was alleged to have murdered Ayako Watanabe,the wife of her Japanese lover Hiroshi Watanabe,on 6 January 1970. Wong was not alone in this crime;her former husband and sweeper Sim Woh Kum had also helped Wong to restrain the victim while Wong repeatedly stabbed the woman to death.
Dexmon Chua Yizhi was a material analyst and Singaporean who was brutally murdered in Singapore by his former girlfriend's husband Chia Kee Chen,who craved revenge on Chua for having an affair with his wife and thus gathered two people to help him abduct and kill Chua. The manner of his death was due to a grievous assault that caused severe fatal injuries. Dexmon Chua was 37 years old when he died at Lim Chu Kang on 28 December 2013.
On 13 March 1997,at one of the HDB flats in King George's Avenue,Kallang,53-year-old Sivapackiam Veerappan Rengasamy was discovered dead in her bedroom by her son. Sivapackiam was found to have been stabbed three times in the neck and she died from the wounds. During police investigations,Sivapackiam's tenant Gerardine Andrew,a 36-year-old prostitute,told police that on the day of the murder,she returned to the flat and saw three people attacking her landlady and robbing her,and they threatened her to leave after briefly holding her hostage.
On 26 August 1996,at a flat in Bedok Reservoir Road,25-year-old Jimmy Chua Hwa Soon,an army sergeant of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF),brutally slashed his 39-year-old sister-in-law Neo Lam Lye and four-year-old nephew. While the boy survived the attack,Neo died as a result of 109 stab and slash wounds on her body. Chua was arrested five hours after the cruel attack,and he admitted to the killing,revealing that he had an affair with Neo ten years prior to the murder. Although Chua put up a defence of diminished responsibility against the charges of attempted murder and murder,the High Court found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to death. The Court of Appeal's subsequent ruling of Chua's case became a notable legal case report which emphasized on the requirements to find a person liable to the defence of diminished responsibility against a criminal charge in Singapore.
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On 6 May 2005,69-year-old Tham Weng Kuen was stabbed more than 110 times by a robber in her flat in Boon Lay and she died as a result. The police managed to arrest two suspects,who were brothers and also the neighbours of the victim.
On the morning of 5 August 2002,a six-month-old Indonesian baby girl named Anjeli Elisaputri was found dead inside the rubbish chute of one of the HDB blocks at Hougang,Singapore. An autopsy report revealed that the baby was raped prior to her death,which was classified as murder. 40-year-old Singaporean Soosainathan s/o Dass Saminathan,a friend of the girl's parents,was arrested hours after the discovery of her body and he was charged with murdering the baby,as well as raping the baby before he killed her.
Yen May Woen was a Singaporean hairdresser and drug trafficker. Yen was charged with drug trafficking in May 2002 after she was caught earlier that month for carrying 120 sachets,each containing 30.16g of heroin. Yen claimed that she did not know about the drugs,which were found in a bag she claimed she got from a friend. She was found guilty in March 2003 and sentenced to death upon conviction. Yen appealed to overturn her conviction and death sentence,but it was dismissed,and she was eventually hanged on 19 March 2004. For the next 19 years,Yen remained the last woman to be executed in Singapore before Saridewi Djamani was hanged on 28 July 2023 for drug trafficking.
On 17 May 2004,39-year-old Chitrabathy Narayanasamy was brutally murdered by her 43-year-old husband G. Krishnasamy Naidu,a taxi driver who was then released on bail for an earlier incident of stabbing his wife twice the month before her death. Krishnasamy,who surrendered himself nine hours after the killing,was charged with murdering Chitrabathy.