Pendakwa Raya v TAN KIAN CHEW

Case Significance

Illustrates that possession and knowledge in a drug-trafficking prosecution can be inferred from an accused's proximity to the drugs and flight from police, and that the court may exercise its discretion to impose life imprisonment with whipping rather than death.

This High Court (Criminal) decision concerns a prosecution for trafficking in dangerous drugs and the inference of possession and knowledge from an accused's conduct. The accused was charged under section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 with trafficking 707.40 grams of methamphetamine found in a motorcar he was driving. The prosecution's case was that, on being signalled by police to stop for a routine inspection, the accused refused and sped off, leading to a lengthy high-speed chase before he was apprehended; he was alone in the car, seated in the driver's seat, and the drugs were found on the footrest of the front passenger seat, in close proximity to him. The court treated this as direct evidence of possession, and held that knowledge of the drugs could be inferred from the accused's conduct — his refusal to stop and his flight to avoid police inspection — with the statutory presumption of trafficking under section 37(da) of the Dangerous Drugs Act also engaged. The accused's defence, that he was merely providing transport to a friend dealing in traditional medicines and had no knowledge of the drugs, was found improbable and insufficient to raise a reasonable doubt or to rebut the presumption. The court convicted the accused. Exercising its sentencing discretion, it declined to impose the death sentence and instead sentenced the accused to life imprisonment — defined as thirty years under section 3 of the Criminal Justice Act 1953 — running from the date of arrest, together with a minimum of twelve strokes of whipping. The judgment illustrates how custody, control and knowledge in a trafficking prosecution may be established through direct proximity and consciousness-of-guilt conduct, and how the sentencing discretion is exercised where the death penalty is no longer mandatory. The court's reasoning shows that flight and the evasion of a police stop can, in the right factual setting, supply the mental element the prosecution must prove, complementing the physical proximity that establishes custody and control of the drugs.