The above is the title of an article by Chen Siyuan and Eunice Chen; offering a deeper insight into the peculiar nature of wrongful convictions in Singapore. Given the endemic nature of the wrongful conviction phenomena in the ‘West’, particularly, in the United States, United Kingdom and much of mainland ‘Europe’; the article cautiously celebrates the Singaporean legal system. The abstract reads:
‘This article seeks to raise awareness about the potentials for wrongful convictions in Singapore by analysing the factors commonly identified as contributing towards wrongful convictions in other jurisdictions, including institutional failures and suspect evidence. It also considers whether the social conditions in Singapore are favourable to discovering and publicising wrongful convictions. The authors come to the conclusion that Singapore does well on a number of fronts and no sweeping reforms are necessary. However, there are areas of risk, viz the excessive focus on crime control rather than due process , which requires some tweaking of the system’. Read full article.
It is the authors’ contention that Singapore is largely immune from the viral nature of wrongful convictions as we know them in Europe and America. That is thumps up to Singapore’s legal system, however, the caveat they have identified in their study, will require much more than tweaking of the system, but will additionally require robust vigilance. As the dictum goes, external vigilance is the price of liberty. The article makes sense.
I arrived at your site by accident. I’m glad that I did.
Good to know!