Channel News Asia reported that the Singapore Court of Appeal dismissed the second application for Kho to be made in two days, at the same time chiding Kho’s lawyers for their “abuse of the process of the court”.
“This case has been about many things. But today it is about the abuse of the process of the court,” Judge Chao Hick Tin said.
The five-panel Court of Appeal chided Jeannette Chong-Aruldoss and Alfred Dodwell for launching two last-minute appeals contesting issues which they could have raised much earlier, including that of the constitutionality of the re-sentencing regime.
“You knew very well the execution was to have taken place last year,” Chao told the pair.
Chong-Aruldoss and Dodwell had filed separate civil actions on Thursday in relation to Kho’s case, which is a criminal matter.
“He has gone away and sought relief by means of civil action. This cannot be allowed,” Chao said.
Chao addressed the lawyers’ filing of applications one after another, saying that the legal system “will fall into disrepute if we allow the system to be scuttled” in this manner.
Senior state counsel and deputy public prosecutor Francis Ng said Kho’s lawyers had done this to “skirt around” current processes and to buy more time for Kho.
He called the filing of the two civil actions, which were done by different lawyers but contained the same arguments, an abuse of the process.
Lawyer Gino Singh had filed one motion on Wednesday, which made allegations of possible bias against Judge Andrew Phang, who had considered two of Kho’s past appeals in 2010 and 2013.
The motion was dismissed on Thursday afternoon. After that the prosecution, led by Ng, informed the Court of Appeal a second application was filed early Thursday morning.
Ng called the motion, filed by Chong-Aruldoss, “an abuse of the process”, as multiple appeals had been filed on the same day. Dodwell had also filed an application, though he withdrew it the same day.