Capital punishment in Singapore


is a legal penalty in Singapore. It is applied in practice mainly for murder and drug-related crimes, and executions are carried out by hanging.
The first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, was a staunch supporter of harsh punishments including execution, but executions peaked under his successor, Goh Chok Tong; the city-state had the second highest per-capita execution rate in the world between 1994 and 1998, estimated by the United Nations to be 13.83 executions annually per one million people during that period. The highest was Turkmenistan with 14.92. Since then, execution has become far less common, with some years having no executions at all. No one was executed in 2012 and 2013, and two persons were executed in 2014. Nevertheless, in recent years, executions have started to increase again: in 2018, 13 people were executed, the most since at least 2003.
Each execution in Singapore is carried out by long drop hanging in Changi Prison at dawn on Friday, except once on 20 May 2016 when the execution of Kho Jabing was carried out at 3:30 pm after his appeal for a stay of execution was dismissed that morning. In a survey done in 2005, reported in The Straits Times, 95% of Singaporeans believe that their country should retain the death penalty.
Singapore has had capital punishment since it was a British colony and became independent before the United Kingdom abolished capital punishment. The Singaporean procedure of hanging condemned individuals is similar to the methods formerly used in the United Kingdom. Capital punishment is considered the norm in East Asia in contrast to Western countries which has largely abolished it within the last century, with its use also legal in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
In 2012, however, Singapore amended its laws to exempt some cases from the mandatory death sentence.

Statistics

The following table of executions was compiled by Amnesty International from several sources, including statistics supplied by the Ministry of Home Affairs in January 2001 and government figures reported to Agence France-Presse in September 2003.
Numbers in curly brackets are the number of foreign citizens executed, according to information disclosed by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
YearMurderDrug-relatedFirearmsTotal
1991197026
1992137121
1993102012
19942154176
19952052173
199610 40 050
199711 515
19984 24 028
19998 35 043
20004 17 021
2000?23??
2001?22??
2002????
2003???10
2004???8
2005???8
2006???8
20071203
20084206
20091315
20100000
20112?20?4
20120000
20130000
20140202
20151304
20162204
20170808
2018211013
20192204
2020

Detailed statistics were not released by the Singapore government between 2000 and 2006. Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong told the BBC in September 2003 that he believed there were "in the region of about 70 to 80" hangings in 2003. Two days later he retracted his statement, saying the number was in fact ten.
The chief executioner, Darshan Singh, said that he has executed more than 850 people during his service from 1959 using the phrase: "I am going to send you to a better place than this. God bless you." This included 18 people on one day, using three ropes at a time. Singh also said that he has hanged seven people within 90 minutes.

Foreign nationals

The people on death row include foreign nationals, many of whom were convicted of drug-related offences. These inmates come from a diverse range of countries, including the United States, Australia, Bangladesh, China, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Portugal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam. Figures released by the Singapore government show that between 1993 and 2003, 36% of those executed were foreigners, including some residents in Singapore.

Legislation

Under Section 316 of the Criminal Procedure Code:
Hangings always take place at dawn on Friday and are by the long drop method developed in the United Kingdom by William Marwood. The executioner refers to the Official Table of Drops. The government have said that they:
Neither persons under the age of 18 at the time of their offence nor pregnant women can be sentenced to death.
Capital cases are heard by a single judge in the High Court. After conviction and sentencing, the sentenced has one appeal to the Court of Appeal. If the appeal fails, the final recourse rests with the President, who has the power to grant clemency on the advice of the Cabinet. In exceptional cases since 2012, the Court of Appeal would be asked to review its previous decisions in concluded criminal appeals where it was necessary to correct a miscarriage of justice, most of which involved drug cases attracting death penalty. The exact number of successful appeals is unknown. In November 1995, one Poh Kay Keong had his conviction overturned after the court found his statement to a Central Narcotics Bureau officer was made under duress. Successful clemency applications are thought to be even rarer. Since 1965, the President's clemency has been granted seven times. The last clemency was in November 2018, when the teen who murdered the wife of Anthony Ler received clemency from President Halimah Yacob.
In November 2012, capital punishment laws in Singapore were revised such that the mandatory death penalty for those convicted of drug trafficking or murder was lifted under certain specific conditions. Judges were empowered with the discretion to sentence such offenders to life imprisonment, which suggests the prisoner lives his entire natural life in jail with the possibility of appeal after 20 years.
The condemned are given notice at least four days before execution. In the case of foreigners who have been sentenced to death, their families and diplomatic missions/embassies are given one to two weeks' notice.
Amnesty International reports that death row inmates are housed in cells of roughly three square metres. Walls make up three sides, while the fourth is vertical bars. They are equipped with a toilet, a sleeping mat, and a bucket for washing. Exercise is permitted twice a day for half an hour at a time. Four days before the execution, the condemned is allowed to watch television or listen to the radio.
Special meals of their choice are also cooked, if within the prison budget. Visiting rights are increased from one 20 minute visit per week to a maximum of four hours each day, though no physical contact is allowed with any visitors.

Capital offences

In addition to the Penal Code, there are four Acts of Parliament that prescribe death as punishment for offences. According to a Singaporean civil rights group, the Think Centre, 70% of hangings are for drug-related offences. In 2017, all 8 hangings were for drug offences that year, and 11 of 13 in 2018.

Penal Code

Under the Penal Code, the commission of the following offences may result in the death penalty:
Since the Penal Code Act 2007, Singapore no longer allows for the death penalty for rape nor mutiny.

Arms Offences Act

The Arms Offences Act under Singapore law regulates criminal offences dealing with firearms and weapons. Any person who uses or attempts to use arms can face execution, as well as any person who uses or attempts to use arms to commit scheduled offences. These scheduled offences are being a member of an unlawful assembly; rioting; certain offences against the person; abduction or kidnapping; extortion; burglary; robbery; preventing or resisting arrest; vandalism; mischief. Any person who is an accomplice to a person convicted of arms use during a scheduled offence can likewise be executed.
Trafficking in arms is a capital offence in Singapore. Under the Arms Offences Act, trafficking is defined as being in unlawful possession of more than two firearms.

Misuse of Drugs Act

Under Schedule 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, any person importing, exporting, or found in possession of more than the following quantities of drugs receives a mandatory death sentence:
Death sentences are also mandatory for any person caught manufacturing :
Under the Act:
Furthermore, any person who has a controlled drug in his possession shall be presumed to have known the nature of that drug.
The majority of executions in Singapore are for drug offences. Since 2010, 23 prisoners have been executed for drug offences, while only 5 have been executed for other offences, such as murder. Death penalty supporters, such as the blogger Benjamin Chang, claim that Singapore has one of the lowest prevalence of drug abuse worldwide: he claims, for instance, that over two decades, the number of drug abusers arrested each year has declined by two-thirds, from over 6,000 in the early 1990s to about 2,000 in 2011. The validity of these figures is disputed by other Singaporeans, such as the Singaporean drugs counsellor Tony Tan. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime notes that Singapore remains a transit destination for drug traffickers in Asia, drug seizures continue to increase and heroin drug use within Singapore is continuing to rise.

Internal Security Act

The preamble of the Internal Security Act states that it is an Act to "provide for the internal security of Singapore, preventive detention, the prevention of subversion, the suppression of organised violence against persons and property in specified areas of Singapore, and for matters incidental thereto." The President of Singapore has the power to designate certain security areas. Any person caught in the possession or with someone in possession of firearms, ammunition or explosives in a security area can be punished by death.

Kidnapping Act

The terms of the Kidnapping Act designate abduction, wrongful restraint or wrongful confinement for ransom as capital offences.

Public debate

Public debate in the Singaporean news media on the death penalty is almost non-existent, although the topic does occasionally get discussed in the midst of major, well-known criminal cases. Efforts to garner public opinion on the issue are rare, although it has been suggested that the population is influenced by a traditional Chinese view which held that harsh punishment deters crime and helps maintain social peace and harmony. In October 2007, Senior Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs Ho Peng Kee said in Parliament that "Certain of us may hold the view that the death penalty should be abolished. But in a survey done two years ago, reported in The Straits Times, 95% of Singaporeans feel that the death penalty should stay. This is something which has helped us to be safe and secure all these years and it is only reserved for a very few select offences."
Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, a former opposition Member of Parliament, was reportedly only given a few minutes to speak in Parliament on the issue before his comments were rebutted by Ho Peng Kee.
Few other opposition Members of Parliament would bring up the issue, which may be reflective of a population generally indifferent to the matter.
Before the hanging of Shanmugam Murugesu, a three-hour vigil was held on 6 May 2005. The organisers of the event at the Furama Hotel said it was the first such public gathering organised solely by members of the public against the death penalty in Singapore. Murugesu had been arrested after being caught in possession of six packets containing just over 1 kilograms of cannabis after returning from Malaysia. He admitted knowledge of one of the packets, which contained 300 grams, but not the other five. The event went unreported on the partially state-owned media and the police shut down an open microphone session just as the first person began to speak.
After the hanging of Van Tuong Nguyen, a Vietnamese-Australian from Melbourne, on 2 December 2005, Sister Susan Chia, province leader of the Good Shepherd Sisters in Singapore, declared that "The death penalty is cruel, inhumane and it violates the right to life." Chia and several other nuns comforted Nguyen's mother two weeks before his execution for heroin trafficking.
Singapore's death penalty laws have drawn comments in the media. For example, science fiction author William Gibson, while a journalist, wrote a travel piece on Singapore that he sarcastically titled Disneyland with the Death Penalty.
In 2010 British author Alan Shadrake published his book Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock, which was critical of the Singapore judicial system. Shadrake was arrested whilst promoting the book in Singapore and later sentenced to six weeks in prison for contempt of court. He is also charged with criminal defamation. The case attracted worldwide attention, putting the Singapore legal system in the spotlight. Shadrake apologised to the court if he had offended the sensitivities of the judiciary and did not mean to undermine the judges or the judiciary, but stood by his book, apart from one small mistake.
The judge, Quentin Loh, dismissed his apology as "nothing more than a tactical ploy in court to obtain a reduced sentence". Shadrake's conviction for scandalising the court was upheld by the Court of Appeal.

Law Society review

In December 2005, the Law Society revealed that it has set up a committee, named Review Committee on Capital Punishment, to examine capital punishment in the country. The President of the Society, Senior Counsel Philip Jeyaretnam, said that the main focus of the review was on issues regarding administering the death penalty such as whether it should be mandatory. A report of the review would be submitted to the Ministry of Law. On 6 November 2006, they were invited to give its views on proposed amendments to the Penal Code to the Ministry of Home Affairs. In their report, issued on 30 March 2007, they argued against the mandatory death penalty:

The death penalty should be discretionary for the offences where the death sentence is mandatory - murder, drug trafficking, firearms offences and sedition - a position similar to that for the offence of kidnapping. There are strong arguments for changing the mandatory nature of capital punishment in Singapore. Judges should be given the discretion to impose the death penalty only where deemed appropriate.

Singapore government's response

The Singapore government states that the death penalty is only used in the most serious of crimes, sending, they say, a strong message to potential offenders. They point out that in 1994 and 1999 the United Nations General Assembly failed to adopt resolutions calling for a moratorium on the death penalty worldwide, as a majority of countries opposed such a move.
Singapore's Permanent Representative to the United Nations wrote a letter to the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions in 2001 which stated:
In January 2004, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a response to Amnesty International's report, "Singapore: The death penalty - A hidden toll of executions". It defended Singapore's policy to retain the death penalty, predicating its arguments on, amongst others, the following grounds:
The Ministry of Home Affairs also refuted Amnesty International's claims of the majority of the executed being foreigners, and that it was "mostly the poor, least educated, and vulnerable people who are executed." The Ministry stated: "Singaporeans, and not foreigners, were the majority of those executed... Of those executed from 1993 to 2003, 95% were above 21 years of age, and 80% had received formal education. About 80% of those who had been sentenced to capital punishment had employment before their convictions".
Following the hanging of Van Tuong Nguyen in 2005, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong reiterated the government's position, stating that "The evil inflicted on thousands of people with drug trafficking demands that we must tackle the source by punishing the traffickers rather than trying to pick up the pieces afterwards... It's a law which is approved of by Singapore's inhabitants and which allows us to reduce the drug problem."
Prior to the United Nations General Assembly's voting on a moratorium on the death penalty in November 2007, Singapore's ambassador Vanu Gopala Menon said, "My delegation would like to remind this committee that capital punishment is not prohibited under international law. Yet it is clear that the sponsors of this draft resolution have decided that there can only be one view on capital punishment, and that only one set of choices should be respected... is an important component of the administration of law and our justice system, and is imposed only for the most serious crimes and serves as a deterrent. We have proper legal safeguards in place to prevent any miscarriage of justice."

Impact on official debate and discussion in the United States

In 2012, a couple of American elected officials and office-seekers have suggested that Singapore's success in combating drug abuse should be examined as a model for the United States. Michael Bloomberg, a former Mayor of New York City, said that the United States could learn a thing or two from nations like Singapore when it came to drug trafficking, noting that "executing a handful of people saves thousands and thousands of lives." The last execution in New York took place in 1963. Several courts have ruled that the death penalty violates the New York Constitution. In 2007, the state of New York abolished the death penalty. 21 states, plus Washington D.C., have abolished the death penalty, with the most recent being Colorado in 2020. However, certain states, such as Texas, still regularly execute prisoners for aggravated murder.
Even when an American politician mentions capital punishment in Singapore, the application of the death penalty in the United States is limited by the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution to only aggravated murders committed by mentally competent adults. For example, former presidential candidate Newt Gingrich repeated his longstanding advocacy for Singaporean methods in the United States's War on Drugs during campaign interviews and speeches.

Notable cases

Murder