Contempt Bill: Maximum penalty ‘won’t mean harsher sentences’

SINGAPORE — While proposed laws on contempt of court set out a maximum penalty that generally exceeds the threshold of previously imposed fines, lawyers interviewed by TODAY did not feel these could lead to harsher sentences being meted out.

Judges will continue to take into account sentencing precedents and the nature of each case, they said.

If the Administration of Justice (Protection) Bill tabled in Parliament on Monday is passed, contempt of court will become a criminal offence. The High Court or Court of Appeal will be able to impose a fine of up to S$100,000 and/or a jail term of up to three years for contempt.

Other courts such as the State Courts will be able to impose fines of up to S$20,000 and/or a jail term of up to 12 months.

No cap is currently stipulated for penalties imposed by the High Court and the Court of Appeal for contempt of court.

At the State Courts, the maximum penalty is a jail term of up to six months, a fine of up to S$2,000 or both.

Previous penalties dealt by the High Court have ranged from the S$8,000 imposed on blogger Alex Au last year, over an article deemed to have suggested judicial partiality, to S$25,000 for Dow Jones Publishing (Asia) in 2008, over articles in The Wall Street Journal Asia that implied that the judiciary was biased, partial and lacked independence.

And in 2010, British author and journalist Alan Shadrake was sentenced to six weeks in jail and an extra two weeks for failing to pay a S$20,000 fine, after the High Court found that his book Once A Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice In The Dock impugned the judiciary’s integrity.

Lawyer Choo Zheng Xi, who had said in a Facebook post that the proposed penalties appeared “very harsh”, told TODAY the maximum sentence “should be pegged to the historical” maximum sentence.

“(The) Parliament should not be more zealous to guard (the) administration of justice than the judges have been,” he added.

But lawyer Tania Chin, a partner at law firm Withers KhattarWong, pointed out that there may be situations where higher penalties than those handed out so far are warranted, such as for repeat offenders.

“In the event contempt of court cases become more rampant, the courts may also wish to impose higher sentences to send a deterrent message to the public as is usually the case when certain offences become more prevalent,” she said.

“Going forward, this Bill would give our judges wider powers to calibrate the appropriate sentence for each fact scenario that comes before the courts,” she added.

Lawyer Sunil Sudheesan, acting head of the Association of Criminal Lawyers of Singapore, said a maximum punishment was set so the courts “can decide how to calibrate”.

“The court will weigh sentencing precedents before deciding the appropriate punishment. I do not think there are contempt cases which have reached the S$100,000 mark but we cannot discount the possibility of that in the future,” he added.