Later, when the changes to Singapore's death penalty laws took effect in January 2013, Kho was re-sentenced to life imprisonment and 24 strokes of the cane on 14 August of that same year.
[3] Wang, who was married with a daughter back in China, was charged with murder and later sentenced to death in September 2011; he also lost his appeal sometime before his re-sentencing.
Wong also said, "He (referring to Wang Wenfeng) had every opportunity and the upper hand to stab Yuen the moment he stepped into the rear passenger side of the taxi."
[23][24][25][26] The Court of Appeal, in sentencing Chia to death a year later, citing the guiding principles set by Kho's case, stated that Chia had "exhibited such viciousness and such a blatant disregard for the life of the deceased, and are so grievous an affront to humanity and so abhorrent that the death penalty is the appropriate, indeed the only adequate sentence", given that he masterminded the abduction out of revenge for his wife's adultery, shown a high degree of premeditation and planning and had a lack of remorse.
Before his arrest, Chia even calmly went for a holiday trip to Malaysia with his wife and two daughters (then aged 18 and 22 respectively) while taking the chance to help Febri to flee the country.
Chan had in fact surrendered himself to the police 2 days after the assault, with the assumption that Tiah's injuries were not fatal, and he thought he would be charged and tried for voluntarily causing grievous hurt.
The 28-year-old Chinese national and nurse was found strangled to death on her bed, and the owner of the flat and Zhang's murderer, 47-year-old Malaysian and cafeteria worker Boh Soon Ho, fled Singapore into Malaysia, where he was arrested on 4 April of that same year.
[37][38] Kho Jabing's case, as well as Chia Kee Chen's, was once again mentioned in the case of 67-year-old Toh Sia Guan, a rag and bone man who was sentenced to life in prison in March 2020 for murdering a 52-year-old coffee shop assistant named Goh Eng Thiam by inflicting a fatal stab wound across Goh's right upper arm, which cut through a major blood vessel and caused him to bleed to death.
High Court judge Aedit Abdullah, who found Toh Sia Guan guilty and convict him of murder under Section 300(c) of the Penal Code on 12 February 2020 before reserving his judgement until 2 March 2020, accepted that Toh did not reflect any blatant disregard for human life or viciousness during the fight with Goh Eng Thiam, because of the absence of premeditation and planning as compared to Chia's case, and also unlike Kho Jabing (who injured Cao Ruyin by surprise and further assaulted him even after he was down), Toh injured the victim during a fight where he is still retaliating against him and never further made any additional injuries on the victim.
The three-judge Court of Appeal (consisting of Judges of Appeal Tay Yong Kwang, Andrew Phang and Belinda Ang), in its ex tempore judgement, cited that Justice Aedit was not incorrect to convict Toh of murder and also rejected his defence that he done the stabbing accidentally or the deceased coffee shop assistant being the one starting the fight.
[44][45] He was convicted of murder under Section 300(b) of the Penal Code the month before for the death of his 31-year-old lover, Chinese national Cui Yajie, on 12 July 2016.
She also accept that there is no premeditation of killing Cui Yajie on Khoo's part, as his intention all along was just to calm her down and dissuade her from confronting his supervisors before the tragic incident.
Khoo, who denied having an affair with Cui and claimed abnormality of mind and other factors in his defence during his trial (which lasted from March to July 2019), was spared the cane as he was above 50 years old at the time of sentencing.
[48] Azlin Arujunah was found guilty of murdering her five-year-old son by scalding him multiple times on four occasions, resulting in the child dying from the infection of his wounds.
The Court of Appeal made these above findings based on references to the landmark case of Kho Jabing, and in comparison, Azlin's disregard for her son's life and cruelty was not the same as Kho's case and it was not severe enough to call for a death sentence, and even though cruelty is a relevant factor for consideration during sentencing, the court "should not be distracted by the gruesomeness of the scene of the crime".
[50][51][52] The case was about a Nigerian man named Ilechukwu Uchechukwu Chukwudi, who, at age 25, came to Singapore on 13 November 2011 to purchase laptops to sell back home in Nigeria.
Ilechukwu earlier said in court that the reason he told these lies was he did not know the full facts of what had occurred, so he felt that the safest thing to do was to deny anything that was not in his possession.
Dr Jaydip Sarkar from the IMH, one of the four psychiatrists assessing Ilechukwu, said the PTSD was likely to have caused him to lie in the statements he gave to the anti-narcotics officers interviewing him shortly after his arrest.
"[50] On 5 July 2019, the original trial judge Lee Seiu Kin found that Ilechukwu was indeed suffering from symptoms of PTSD during the recording of his statements.
In his own words, CJ Menon read, "In our judgment, there is now a plausible innocent explanation that accounts for the applicant's lies and omissions in his statements."
In his individual dissenting judgement, Justice Tay opined that the new evidence did not reveal much error in the previous appeal decision in 2015 regarding Ilechukwu's alleged guilt of the crime.
[62][63] After his acquittal, Ilechukwu, however, could not immediately return to Nigeria because he faced issues of travelling restrictions due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic in Singapore.
She will be possibly be in prison for the remainder of her natural lifespan, unless she was deemed eligible for release on parole upon the pending review of her conduct, which is to take place from 13 November 2031 onwards once she finished serving at least 20 years of her sentence.
After his arrest on 6 July 2010, Abdul Kahar was found guilty in a High Court trial on 27 August 2013,[64] and he was sentenced to death on 4 February 2015.
[65] A judicial review application filed in 2016 to challenge the Public Prosecutor's decision not to grant Abdul Kahar a certificate was also dismissed.
On 16 August 2018, while he still remains on death row, Abdul Kahar filed for an application to reopen his case, and his lawyer argued against the constitutionality of the alternative sentencing regime in the Misuse of Drugs Act, stating that it violates the principles of equality before the law and separation of powers.
Norasharee was arrested in July 2015 and charged with instigating drug trafficker Mohamad Yazid bin Md Yusof to traffic in not less than 120.90g of diamorphine on 23 October 2013.
He also found that the witness to be contradictory and inconsistent between written declarations, and his late appearance in the case to testify for Norasharee had also undermined his credibility.
The High Court initially accepted his explanation and sentenced him to 15 years in jail with ten strokes of the cane for a lower drug charge.
Later, in January 2020, Gobi, together with another death row inmate Datchinamurthy Kataiah (a convicted drug trafficker), also filed a joint lawsuit over allegations that illegal methods are used to carry out executions in Singapore, which was also dismissed.