Indian-origin lawyers fined by Singapore court for delaying execution of drug trafficker

M Ravi, who did most of the work, was ordered by the Court of Appeal to bear 75 % of the costs, while Violet Netto, who later took over as the lawyer on record, was held liable for 25 %.

2 Indian-origin Singaporean lawyers have been ordered to pay SGD20,000 (US$15,000) in costs to the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) for a last-ditch attempt to halt the execution of an Indian descendant Malaysian drug trafficker Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam in April this year.

M Ravi, who did most of the work, was ordered by the Court of Appeal to bear 75 % of the costs, while Violet Netto, who later took over as the lawyer on record, was held liable for 25 %.

The AGC had originally sought personal costs totalling SGD 40,000 against the lawyers for setting out to delay Nagaenthran's execution by filing applications without merit, which caused it to incur unnecessary costs, according to a report by The Straits Times.

Nagaenthran was hanged at Changi Prison Complex on April 27, 2022.

He was convicted of trafficking 42.72g of heroin in 2010 and given the mandatory death penalty. His appeals against his conviction and sentence were dismissed in 2011.

Over the years, Nagaenthran filed a total of 7 applications to challenge his death sentence.

On April 26, a last-minute application by Nagaenthran's mother to halt his rescheduled execution was dismissed by the court

Days before he was scheduled to be hanged on November 10 last year, Ravi filed an applicaton seeking judicial review of the impending execution.

Under the law, the court has the power to order personal costs against a lawyer who causes the incurring of unnecessary costs by acting improperly, unreasonably or negligently.

On Wednesday, a 5-judge Court of Appeal, led by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, said it would be apparent to any reasonable defence counsel that the case advanced by the duo lacked factual basis.

The court reiterated that the way the case had been conducted was a blatant and egregious abuse of the court process.

Instead of putting their best case forward at the first instance, the lawyers "drip fed" the supposed evidence and tendered documents at the last possible moment, said the court.

The court also rejected Ravi's argument that he and Netto cannot be made to pay personal costs as they are no longer practising lawyers.

Ravi also filed another application, asking for a stay of execution for Nagaenthran to be assessed by a panel of psychiatrists.

The main argument was that the death sentence could not be carried out because Nagaenthran was mentally disabled.

The case was argued by Netto, assisted by Ravi, before the apex court on March 1.

On March 29, the court dismissed the legal actions, saying that the case was baseless and that there was no admissible evidence of any decline in Nagaenthran's mental condition.

The proceedings brought by Nagaenthran amounted to an abuse of the court's processes and had been conducted with seeming aim of delaying his execution, The Straits Times cited the court as saying.

Source: Hindustan Times, Staff, May 27, 2022

🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Florida Set to Execute Man Who Said He Killed to Reach Death Row, Challenging Misconception that Death Penalty Deters Crime

Florida is scheduled to execute James Robertson at noon on Tuesday, October 13, at Florida State Prison. His execution remains scheduled despite the withdrawal of William Lee Thompson’s death warrant, which had called for a 2nd execution that evening. If completed, this will be Florida’s 17th execution of 2026. Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) and partners will be holding a series of vigils and demonstrations across the state.

Florida executes James Robertson

STARKE, Fla. — A Florida prisoner who said he killed his cellmate specifically to get on death row was executed Tuesday, nearly 18 years after the attack. James Robertson, 63, declined to offer any last words before receiving a three-drug injection and was pronounced dead about 10 minutes later. It was a stark contrast to the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee two weeks ago, where she was rushed to the hospital after surviving two lethal doses of pentobarbital.

Christa Pike: 4 Major Questions As She Returns to Death Row

As Christa Pike returns to death row after surviving Tennessee’s attempt to execute her, several questions remain about her case and what comes next. Pike, 50, was discharged from hospital and moved back to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, the women’s prison where she was housed for 30 years, her attorneys said on Saturday. She was hospitalized after surviving 2 doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital as Tennessee attempted to execute her on September 30. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, her classmate at a Job Corps training program in Knoxville, Tennessee. Pike was 18 at the time.

Saudi Arabia executes two Bangladeshis over 'immoral act' inside mosque

Saudi Arabia has carried out the death penalty on two Bangladeshi nationals in Mecca. The country's Interior Ministry announced this in a statement on Wednesday. According to the report, they were sentenced over allegations of involvement in immoral acts inside a mosque in Mecca. The information was reported by Ajel News, citing the Saudi Interior Ministry's statement. The two Bangladeshis executed were a man and a woman, Nazrul Islam Abdul Basir and Sithi Akhter. The “immoral acts” referred to illicit heterosexual intercourse, not homosexual activity.

Christa Pike's Survival Wasn't a Miracle. That's What Should Scare Us.

What happened in Tennessee's execution chamber is one of the most common failures in medicine Christa Pike is awake. A week after Tennessee strapped her to a gurney and gave her two doses of pentobarbital , she is off the ventilator and speaking from a hospital bed, still shackled to it. Her lawyers call her recovery " medically unprecedented. " Legal scholars say she is the first person in American history to survive a lethal injection after the drug was actually given. I understand the impulse to make such claims. I consulted for Pike's legal team, but I have also spent three decades in operating rooms and intensive care units (ICUs), and I want to resist the word "unprecedented" and the word "miracle" that hovers just behind it.

Buffalo Tops shooter files last-minute bid to avoid death penalty

Payton Gendron, who is already serving life without parole for killing 10 Black people in a racist mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022, is asking a federal judge to throw out the case that could send him to death row. Defense attorneys filed the motion Monday — a day before jury selection was scheduled to begin — seeking to dismiss Gendron’s federal indictment. They argued that Black residents are underrepresented in the jury pool for New York’s Western District, according to WIVB and WKBW.

USA | Firing squad execution to be livestreamed, Pentagon says

The public will be able to watch the execution of a former US Army major by firing squad, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said. A Defense Department official told the BBC the execution of Nidal Hasan, who shot dead 13 unarmed US soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, would be livestreamed. It is believed it would be the first public execution in the US in almost a century. The decision to livestream it is "unprecedented in the modern era" and "on uncertain legal terrain", said John Mills, a lawyer who works with inmates sentenced to death.

Tennessee | Christa Pike’s lawyer says she has not regained consciousness since her failed execution

Christa Pike has remained unconscious and on a ventilator at a hospital in the four days since her failed execution in Tennessee, and her prognosis might not be known for days more, one of her lawyers said Sunday. Little has been released about Pike’s condition since Wednesday night’s execution attempt. She has since remained hospitalized under guard as doctors try to get the massive dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital out of her system. When asked whether she ever regained consciousness after the execution attempt, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, Pike’s lawyer, said on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “Not that I am aware of.”

What Tennessee wants to do next to Christa Pike is beyond grim

Christa Pike, the woman who survived two execution attempts in Tennessee earlier this week, remains hospitalized in critical condition, where presumably medical staff is at work trying to keep her alive. If she wakes from the coma she had entered, Tennessee officials want to start anew to inject lethal drugs into her seemingly too-small veins to kill her and carry out the state death warrant. Pike also is being treated for “significant injuries to both arms” sustained when two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her. If she dies, there will be no need to try again. As we know by now, Tennessee tried to put Pike to death Wednesday night by lethal injection for a murder she committed when she was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in the state in 200 years.

Tennessee | Republicans legislature to investigate other execution methods after failed lethal injections

Republican leaders in Tennessee’s legislature say they will investigate the reliability of lethal injection as an execution method after the state failed to execute two death row inmates in the span of five months. Gov. Bill Lee stopped the May execution of Tony Carruthers after a physician unsuccessfully attempted to insert intravenous lines to begin the lethal injection process for over an hour. Death row inmate Christa Pike survived two failed rounds of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol on Sept. 30 before the execution was halted. Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, is receiving medical care in a Nashville hospital.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog