Public Prosecutor v AGG

Woo Bih Li J:

[1] The accused person, AGG (Male/21 years old) faced the following charges in respect of his younger sister, B and in respect of some other unrelated offences. The charges read as follows:

[2] The prosecution proceeded with the second, third, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth charges. AGG pleaded guilty to all the charges and I accepted his plea of guilt and convicted him on the charges. AGG agreed to the first, fourth and fifth charges to be taken into consideration for sentencing.

[3] The facts leading to the commission of the offences, the arrest and other relevant information were contained in the Statement of Facts (“SOF”) which AGG agreed to. Paragraphs 3 to 30 of that SOF read as follows:

[4] AGG pleaded for a lighter sentence. He said that he was extremely remorseful. He was a hooligan a few years ago but had changed. He wanted to finish his national service. He was concerned about his mother and grandmother who were seriously ill.

[5] AGG had previous convictions in 2002 in respect of uncensored or obscene films, voluntarily causing hurt and theft for which he was asked to reside in a juvenile home. I did not enhance his sentence because of these prior offences as they were different in nature from the offences of outrage of modesty and rape. However, they demonstrated that he had had a brush with the law before. Instead of changing his ways, he had gravitated to the more serious offences of outrage of modesty and rape.

[6] There is only one other case of rape by a sibling of a young age. This was PP v S [2003] SGHC 70 (“PP v S”) in which I had convicted the accused on his plea of guilt in respect of rape under s 376(2) of the Penal Code (Cap 224, 1985 Rev Ed). I said at [22]:

[7] In that case, I sentenced the accused to ten years’ imprisonment and 12 strokes of the cane for each of the two charges under s 376(2) of the Penal Code with the sentences for each of these two charges to run consecutively making a total of 20 years of imprisonment.

[8] However, in PP v S, there were three victims and the charge was under the more serious s 376(2) rather than s 376(1) of the Penal Code.

[9] On the other hand, AGG, while professing to be remorseful, had escalated his sexual offences from outrage of modesty to rape and had assaulted B when she confronted him instead of feeling shame and remorse.

[10] In the circumstances and being mindful of his young age, I sentenced AGG to 12 years’ imprisonment and six strokes of the cane on each of the charges under s 376(1) and one year’s imprisonment and three strokes of the cane for the charge under s 354 of the Penal Code. While the sentence of ten years’ imprisonment on each of the s 376(2) charges in PP v S might appear lower than that of 12 years’ imprisonment for each of the s 376(1) charges in the present case before me, it must be remembered that in PP v S, I had ordered the two stiffest sentences to run consecutively making a total of 20 years whereas I was not minded to do that for the present case. Accordingly, the total imprisonment for AGG was in fact 13 years’ imprisonment, ie, the sentence of one year for the sixth charge (under s 354) was to run consecutively with the sentence of 12 years for the second charge (under s 376(1)) which was in turn to commence from 4 June 2009, the date of remand. On the totality principle, I was of the view that the conduct of the accused person in PP v S was more heinous than that of AGG. This explains why the total imprisonment for AGG was less than that in PP v S.

[11] As for each of the seventh to ninth charges, I sentenced AGG to a fine of $600 and in default, six days’ imprisonment. I added the mandatory disqualification from holding or obtaining a driving licence under the Road Traffic Act (Cap 276, 2004 Rev Ed) for 12 months from the date of conviction, ie, 19 February 2010 for the ninth charge.

[12] AGG has filed an appeal against the sentence.