Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi
yax-645 The case of Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi
The case of Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi (see [2005] SGHC 233 and [2006] 2 SLR 503) is a sad story of how fucked up the singapore legal system is. There is little doubt that Tochi is prima facie guilty of trafficking. But i really doubt that Tochi is deserving of the death penalty.
Some dubious logic from the CA decision (at para. 6) :
“It will be gleaned from these cases that the true principle is that, ultimately, a failure to inspect may strongly disincline a court from believing an “absence of knowledge” defence. Therefore, to say, as in this case, that the first appellant thought it was chocolates was another way of saying he did not know that he was carrying drugs. Given the evidence, including the evidence that the first appellant did not inspect the articles when he could have done so (the turning of the blind eye), the court was entitled to find that the presumption had not been rebutted.”
It seems to to me that the court has already conceded that Tochi did not have objective knowledge of the drugs, but somehow through imputed subjective knowledge, concluded that he should have known of the existence of the drugs. And he expects this of a poor and naive 18 year old African kid who is probably not very street savvy. More importantly, the Court of Appeal accepted the findings of fact from the High Court, and only considered the case of issues of law. But what the case actually turns on is knowledge of the nature of the drugs and only a finding of fact that Toshi did not know of the drugs could have saved him. In short, he was already a dead man walking when he lost the High Court case.
In other words, a miscarriage of justice.
