“Papa, don’t you have any good clients?” he exclaimed and walked away in disgust. I just looked at Vimi and we both burst out laughing.
But his innocent question lingered in my mind for many days after that. How do you tell a boy that everyone charged with an offence is not necessarily guilty? How do you tell him that the defence counsel has an important role to play? How do you tell him that people who are charged with crimes are not necessarily bad people? Some of them commit their crimes on impulse, or perhaps when they are in a state of utter despair, drowning in their own disappointments and frustrations. How could I tell my son that, sometimes, people hit out at society because they have lost all hope? I couldn’t explain these thoughts to my son but I shared them with my wife.
She said, “Yes, I understand that you have to do what you have to do.”
“You know, Vimi, in my years of practice, I’ve seen all sorts of people. I’ve seen the best in men and the worst in men.”
When I was young, my father told me that he wanted all his children to receive a university education. That was his target for all of us, which we met. I personally argued with him about it because I was sick of studying by the time I reached the age when I could go to university. But I did and forged this career for myself. It made him very proud. A few years ago, my son indicated to me that he didn’t want to read law and, naturally, I had to ask him for his reasons.
“I don’t have an interest in that subject, papa. I hope you don’t mind,” he replied.
“Of course I don’t mind. I’ve never insisted that you must read law and I will encourage and support you in whatever you choose to do.”
When I asked him what he wanted to do, he replied, “Banking and finance.”
I said, “Okay, that’s fine.” My wife listened to our conversation but didn’t say anything. She asked me later if I was disappointed and I told her that I honestly wasn’t. As I have stated, my son has to make his own choices in life. I will support him in whatever he does.
It wasn’t like that for me initially. In 1963, I was sent to India to study medicine because my mother wanted me to be a doctor. I lost one whole year of my life trying to please my mother. I knew from the first few classes I attended that I wasn’t suited to study medicine. I was very homesick too. I came back after only three months in Loyola College, Madras, and enrolled in Raffles Institution. I had to wait a long time to start school because the school year was already in full swing. I wouldn’t want my son to be in a position where he is doing something he doesn’t want to do just to please me or my wife.
Right now, he’s chasing his own dream, studying banking and financial services at Ngee Ann Polytechnic. He chose to go to the polytechnic despite qualifying for a place in a junior college because he wanted to start doing the subjects that he liked straight away. He said there was no point in doing history or geography or physics or chemistry when he could embark on banking and finance at Ngee Ann. It made sense to me. But lately, he has shown some interest in the law which I’m secretly pleased about. He will read the case files that I bring home from the office and sometimes even discuss aspects of those cases with me. I find his input valuable also because he provides me with an insight into how his generation thinks about crime and punishment. In fact, he has enlightened me on many issues. I must say that, even after almost four decades of working as a lawyer, crime and punishment is something which I find very hard to define. Many books and papers have been written, but to me it’s a subject that bears different definitions for different people. Like my career as a lawyer, crime and punishment has evolved since I first started. It’s like a living being I have walked side by side with all these years, our respective paths sometimes crossing but never for too long.
Not long ago, as I was addressing the Court of Appeal in a case of the prosecution’s appeal against the sentence of three years given to a person who had killed his pregnant wife, I was trying very hard to argue why the sentence was not manifestly inadequate. I was throwing arguments about how there must be rehabilitation. The Court of Appeal, comprising Justice of Appeal Andrew Pang, Justice of Appeal V K Rajah and Justice Tay Yong Kwang listened very attentively. I was stopped at one stage by the presiding judge, Andrew Pang. He said: “You know, Mr Anandan, we agree with you on rehabilitation and the need to rehabilitate offenders, especially those who suffer from mental disorders, but don’t you think that this court also has the responsibility to look after the interest of the community?”
I agreed. “Of course, you have the responsibility to look after the community.”
“Don’t you think we should balance the rights of the accused person and the rights of the community and society in general, and make sure that the rights of the accused person do not supersede the rights of the community?” Justice Pang asked.
Again, I agreed. “Yes, Your Honour, it’s a very fine balancing act and I am glad that I don’t have to do it. The responsibility is yours.” It was the first time I saw Justice Pang showing one of his rare smiles. Justice Rajah was smiling too. Naturally, they reserved judgment on the appeal and subsequently raised the prison sentence from three to five years. I thought it was fair, especially as the prosecution was asking for 10 years.
One of the questions that people often ask me is how I deal with my cases and the accused persons. I always tell them that preparation for a case is not an easy task, especially when it is a capital case. In capital cases, you are burdened with a very heavy responsibility because the life of the accused is at stake. You simply cannot afford to make mistakes. If you do, there is a possibility that your client will hang. The situation puts you under a lot of stress and the pressure is unrelenting. You have to do the best you can to keep your client away from the gallows.
In the last few years, I have been lucky in the sense that I have my nephew, Sunil, to help me. He does most of the ground work of running around and most of the preparation. He has a passion for criminal law and does his research very well. We also have our own interns and other legal associates who will do research and prepare documents and briefs, which I read and correct if necessary. Whatever others do for you on a case, you still have to countercheck and amend. Sometimes, you have to rehash the whole thing because if something goes wrong in your case, ultimately only you will be held responsible.
Interviewing and taking instructions from the accused person is a very difficult task. In all capital cases, the accused persons are in prison and instructions can only be taken from them there. Practically every Saturday morning, Sunil and I spend our time in one prison or another because that’s just about the only time we have to interview clients who are being held there. We are both in court virtually non-stop from Mondays to Fridays, but we do make trips to prison during weekdays when we don’t have to appear in court. For accused persons who are out on bail, instructions can be taken in our office at Raffles Place, which is definitely a more conducive environment. We can even do it over a cup of coffee. I can tell you that it’s certainly more relaxing as you know that the punishment will not be as harsh as in capital cases. No one’s life is in your hands.
When you are seeing the accused for the first time, there are always difficulties. They don’t know you and they have no reason yet to trust you. It’s very difficult to build trust and confidence in a prison. In the early days of my practice, it was especially difficult because no one knew me. But as I became a little more popular, prisoners started to know about me and it was easier to talk to them. Still, it is no cakewalk. As a lawyer you have to ensure that the accused person is telling you the truth and, to do that, sometimes you have to cross-examine him, just as you would do a witness in court. When you think that the accused is not telling you the whole story, you have to scream and shout at him, or threaten to discharge yourself, or tell him that you know he is a liar. It saps a lot of energy out of you because you have to make judgement calls on people you don’t know at all. Only after two or three sessions with the accused person will you get the trut
h, or at least very close to the truth. Without these sessions, it is very difficult to defend an accused person because you can be caught by surprise by what the prosecution presents in court. In our system where ambush tactics are still allowed, the prosecution sometimes takes full advantage and catches you flat-footed in court. It’s definitely not a pleasant feeling for any lawyer when that happens.
As you go through the facts of a case with the accused person, you warn him of the dangerous minefields he could face under cross-examination but you should not coach him on what to say. You can tell him what kind of questions to expect and to reply truthfully. You cannot ask him to lie because that is unethical. It is also a dangerous tactic. You can be caught out because if a client is pressured under cross-examination, he can always turn around and say, “My lawyer instructed me to say this, so why are you shouting at me?” That would be the end for you as it could land you in a lot of trouble. In your mind, you must always remember that your client can be your worst enemy.
As I will bring up later in the book, another source of problems you have in most cases is the relatives and friends of the accused person. They can be a real pain in the neck. Often, they feel that since they have paid you some money, all of them can call you at half hourly intervals to find out what’s happening with the case. Uncle will call, aunty will call, cousin will call. I have to say, too, that this is more of a problem with my Indian clients. Of course some of these calls are out of genuine concern for the accused person, but in many instances, you get the feeling that they are doing it because they think it’s their right. So, what we do is that when we visit the accused person, we tell him to inform his relatives and friends to stop bothering us because it interrupts our work. When they hear that we are not able to do our jobs properly defending the accused person, they usually back off. That’s how we deal with this particular type of problem. But having said that, we must always remember that as practising lawyers, relatives and friends are part and parcel of the deal. We try hard to be diplomatic in our dealings with them.
In fact, some of these relatives and friends can be very helpful. They can give us information which the accused person has forgotten or not given because he thinks it casts him in an unfavourable light. Yes, relatives and friends can be a nuisance at times, but they are always available to help you out. For example, they will personally bring a witness to the office to allow us to record a statement. We can understand the agony and the stress that parents and siblings go through especially when their son or brother faces a capital case. So, you have to give them some leeway, you have to empathise. However much you feel like screaming at them or telling them to get out of the office when they get so irritating that it affects your work, you have to choose to control that feeling, smile at them and offer them a cup of coffee instead. You have to take deep breaths, remain calm and assure them that you are doing your best for their loved one. In capital cases, everyone wants you to give a kind of guarantee that the accused person will not hang or, in other cases, that they will not go to jail. But when the accused person goes to jail or gets sentenced to death, the family and friends will pounce on you because they think you have reneged on your promise. They will scream at you and abuse you in public. In their frustration, they will even report you to the Law Society.
Lawyers should never make promises or give guarantees. I will usually give an assurance that I will do my best for the accused person. I’ll tell the family that we have a whole team who will be involved in the accused person’s defence and who will do their best. But the outcome of a trial cannot be guaranteed because that’s the nature of the law. And I will go on record here to say that any lawyer who gives you a guarantee is a snake-oil merchant and only interested in your money. How can anyone make such a commitment when the system is so unpredictable? Anything can happen in a trial. Usually, when we give the family our assurance that we will do our best, that is enough. If they insist on a guarantee, I will always tell them that I would like to discharge myself from the case.
For the most part of my years as a lawyer, my wife has been by my side. She worked with me when I was running a small firm in the 1970s—we weren’t married then. She was in charge of conveyancing. She knows what happens in a legal firm, and is well aware of all the trials and tribulations I go through with the courts, accused persons, their families and friends. When I get frustrated, she’s the calming influence. Vimi stopped work when she was pregnant with my son and never went back to work after that. She devoted herself to being a good mother and a good wife. She not only drives me around but also takes care of all issues pertaining to our household. This includes the task of dispensing the 15 types of medication I require on a daily basis because of my health. Her dedication to my health gives me the peace of mind to attend strictly to my passion—my work. At the end of each day, I will tell her almost everything I did that day. I often tap on her for opinions to give a new perspective to handling a case in question. Vimi is my multi-tasking princess—she’s my nurse, my driver, my financial controller, my best friend, my partner.
When she married me, she knew about my health condition. I suffered my first heart attack in December 1978. I collapsed on a field while playing football for graduates of the University of Singapore against undergraduates. I was rushed to Toa Payoh Hospital by my good friend, Choo Ker Yong. The ECG showed that I was having a massive heart attack and I was immediately warded in the ICU. I spent my 31st birthday in the ICU, struggling for my life. Partly because it was my birthday, everyone came to see me. There were too many visitors. Towards the end of the visiting hour, my elder sister, who was a doctor there, noticed a visible slur in my speech and she quickly got rid of the visitors, but the harm had already been done. All that excitement had triggered a stroke. I was paralysed on the right side and lost my ability to speak. I was diagnosed with a blood clot on the left side of my brain. With the stroke, my heart weakened and the graph showed that my heartbeat was coming dangerously close to a flat line. I believe many of my relatives and friends had given up hope. Some of my friends later confessed to me that they were praying for me to die. They didn’t want me to survive half paralysed and dumb. Most of them prayed for me to recover fully. Vimi was outside the ward, praying along with the rest.
While I was fighting for my life in the hospital, my elder sister took leave and stayed with me every day. My other family members were also always there and whenever I opened my eyes, I would see one of them sitting beside me. It gave me a great sense of comfort and confidence that I would recover. My late brother, Surash, would sit outside the ward, reading a book and waiting for me to summon him. When I recovered and could walk to the corridor, I used to stand and stare at him as he concentrated on his book. After some time he would realise that I was standing beside him and he would put his book down and ask me, with a smile, “How Joe? How are you today?” We sometimes played Scrabble and only later did I realise that he had sat outside the ward throughout the night. We also shared the specially brewed soup made by my then future mother-in-law to speed up my recovery.
The doctors considered my full recovery nothing less than a miracle. I went back to work a few months later. Vimi and the other girls, especially Jacqueline Chow and Lina Lim, looked after me.
Many people thought I would give up my practice after that heart attack. I never even contemplated it. Some of my rivals in the profession started spreading rumours, telling people that I had lost my legal mojo after my heart attack and that I didn’t have the stamina to continue. The more I heard those vicious rumours (some even spread by my own friends), the more disillusioned I became. I went back to smoking, a habit which I had given up for a few months after my heart attack. But I continued to practise with a vengeance to show everybody I was still capable of good work.
Many readers will wonder why I chose to feature the cases that appear in this book. They were selected for various reasons: some because of their high profile nature, some for their complexity and some because of their si
mplicity. But most of all, they were chosen because they somehow brought out the best in me. All these cases also had a profound effect on me and even now I have flashbacks of good and bad memories of them. I hope readers will enjoy my simple narration of the facts and my feelings. I have written for the man in the street, not for law students and lawyers to analyse.
At the time of writing, I was already briefed to act for three accused persons charged with murder and drug trafficking. The briefs look very interesting. In one of them, the accused is a Chinese national charged for the murder of her brother-in-law. I was asked to defend her by the Chinese embassy. Cases keep coming in, some more interesting than others.
When I was released from prison in November 1976, I said that I would write a book about my experience in prison. The New Nation, a newspaper that is now defunct, headlined on the front page: “Subhas to tell his own story”. David Marshall, after reading the article, called me and warned me to be careful. He said that it was easy to fall into a trap and be charged for breach of some prison regulations. I, too, had reconsidered the position as I realised that I could not say many things because my friends were still incarcerated and I would, in some ways, be breaking their confidence in me. The title of that book was to be “It’s Easy To Cry”. I started it but never finished writing it. In some ways, this book is a substitute. And who knows—there may even be a sequel depending on whether my wife is prepared to go through the whole rigmarole once again.
THE MOULDING YEARS
The Base
Prefect
Raffles Institution
University Days
First Murder Trial
Becoming a Criminal Lawyer
The Best I Could Page 2