Teo Cheng Leong

Teo Cheng Leong (张清良 Zhāng Qīngliáng) was a Singaporean gunman and armed robber. Teo was one of the four perpetrators of a firearm robbery at Geylang on 26 March 1969, in which he robbed a housewife of her valuables and S$1,000 in cash, and he later fired two rounds at a police inspector while being cornered by the police, who all arrested him at a hut he was hiding in. In Singapore's first capital trial without a jury, Teo was found guilty of discharging his firearm and sentenced to death in February 1970. Teo became the first person to be given the death penalty after the abolition of jury trials for capital crimes in Singapore. After losing his appeals against the conviction and sentence, Teo was hanged sometime in May 1971.

Background

Teo Cheng Leong was born in Singapore in 1933. Teo was neither married nor had children, and he worked as an odd job worker.

During his adulthood years, Teo was involved in several brushes with the law. On 27 September 1954, Teo was sentenced to jail for seven years on a charge of armed robbery. Later, on 7 January 1961, Teo was convicted of breaking and entering and thus jailed for three years. In a third case, Teo failed to report to the police while under supervision, and hence he spent one year in prison after his conviction for the offence on 23 April 1963. Teo was convicted a fourth time on 2 December 1965, when he committed armed robbery with several other people, and hence he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment. In his fifth case, Teo was found guilty of criminal breach of trust and on 3 September 1966, he was given a jail term of ten months. On the same date itself, Teo was charged in court for failing to report to the police while under supervision and hence received another sentence of 18 months.

Sims Avenue robbery and gunfight (1969)

On 26 March 1969, Teo Cheng Leong, then 36 years old, teamed up with three men to commit armed robbery at Sims Avenue, Geylang.

On the afternoon of that day itself, Teo and his three accomplices – Ng Chwee Bock (黄水木 Huáng Shuǐmù), Khoo Meng Hwa (邱明华 Qiū Mínghuá) and a third person whose identity remains unknown – barged into the shophouse of 39-year-old cobbler Chew Sin Kok (赵善国 Zhào Shànguó), and out of the four, Teo and one of his accomplices each wielded a gun while the remaining two were armed with knives. While Chew was outside the shop and having lunch, the robbers held the other occupants of the shophouse hostage, and they robbed Chow Sow Lin (周秀莲 Zhōu Xiùlián), a housewife and mother of four (two sons and two daughters), of her valuables (worth about S$1,000) and S$1,000 in cash, as well as two wrist watches, a camera and radio. During the course of the holdup, Chew returned to open his shop but found the entrance to the shop locked from inside. Feeling peculiar, Chew went to the back of the shop and he noticed his 30-year-old colleague Cheok Yan Soo (石贤斯 Shí Xiánsī), who was one of the hostages of the holdup, looking down at him from the two-storey window and beckoning him to call the police to catch the robbers. Chew quickly went to call the police, but ten minutes after doing so, Chew sought the help of nearby residents and alerted them about the robbery holdup at his shop. After gathering about 40 people, Chew and the crowd returned to the shop, and they saw all the four robbers escaping. Upon sight of the robbers, the crowd gave chase.

The robbers fled to Lorong 35 and then to Geylang Road, and at that point, Teo split up with the three other men, who all fled towards Lorong 40 while Teo himself ran along the main road, with his gun and some of the loot. While Teo was still running to Lorong 39, several members of the crowd alerted a passing patrol car, which was driven by Inspector Desmond D'Oliveiro of Joo Chiat Police Station, and they alerted Inspector D'Oliveiro about Teo. Inspector D'Oliveiro, who allowed several men to enter his car, chased after Teo, who eventually reached an empty hut in the forest, which belonged to a furniture maker. Inspector D'Oliveiro, who was joined by two more officers, managed to reach the hut and cornered Teo. A brief gunfight occurred, beginning with Teo rushing out of the hut to fire two shots at Inspector D'Oliveiro, who evaded the bullets and was unharmed, while the police also returned fire twice at Teo, who was similarly unharmed and returned to the hut. Subsequently, police reinforcements arrived and tear gas was later fired into the hut. A few minutes after the tear gas was fired, Teo was forced to emerge from the hut and surrendered. Teo was therefore subdued by the police, and placed under arrest for both the firearm robbery and the shoot-out with the police. A stolen radio, a loaded revolver and a gold chain were recovered.

A day after the robbery, one of Teo's three accomplices, 28-year-old Khoo Meng Hwa, was arrested as the second suspect behind the case. Another of Teo's accomplices, 33-year-old Ng Chwee Bock, surrendered himself to the police two days after Khoo was captured, making him the third person to be apprehended for the robbery. The fourth man, however, was never found.

Khoo and Ng were later charged with armed robbery, and this was not their first criminal offence; Khoo, an illegal taxi driver who was married with one child, was previously convicted of robbery once, while Ng had six previous convictions for various crimes, including two for being a secret society member. The two men pleaded guilty to armed robbery charges in February 1970, and during the same month, both Ng and Khoo were each sentenced to ten years in prison. As for Teo, he was charged with both armed robbery and illegal discharge of firearms, the latter offence which attracted the death penalty under Singaporean law.

In June 1969, after a preliminary hearing, Teo's case was transferred to the High Court for trial hearing on a later date.

Trial of Teo Cheng Leong

Court hearing

On 17 February 1970, 37-year-old Teo Cheng Leong officially stood trial at the High Court for one count of firing two shots at Inspector Desmond D'Oliveiro under the 1955 Arms Offences Ordinance, in addition to one count of armed robbery. By the time of Teo's trial, Singapore had fully abolished the jury trial procedure for capital cases on 5 January 1970, a month before the beginning of Teo's trial. Therefore, instead of a jury, Teo would be tried before two trial judges - Justice A V Winslow and Justice T. Kulasekaram - at the High Court. Teo pleaded guilty to the armed robbery charge, but he pleaded not guilty to the firearms charge, which carried either the death penalty or life imprisonment if found guilty. Although Teo pleaded guilty together with both Khoo Meng Hwa and Ng Chwee Bock in the same court, his trial for shooting at Inspector D'Oliveiro was to proceed with himself alone in court.

Before the trial was to begin, opposition politician and prominent lawyer J B Jeyaretnam, who represented Teo, requested to the trial court that Two should be given a chance to undergo a jury trial, given that his crime took place in March 1969, about ten months before the complete abolition of capital jury trials on 5 January 1970, and that the case itself was a question of whether Teo's right to a jury trial was a substantive right or a procedural matter. In response, the trial prosecutor P R Isaac argued that not having a jury trial did not amount to a deprivation of Teo's substantive rights and given that the jury system was no longer valid in Singapore, Teo cannot request to have a jury trial to hear his case. After a day of deliberation, the two judges agreed with the prosecution, stating that Teo had no right to a jury trial since the jury system under the old legislation had been abolished under the new legislation, which allowed two judges to preside death penalty trials, and this new procedure was to apply for all trials conducted after 5 January 1970, the official date of the jury system's abolition, irrespective to whether there were outstanding cases that happened before or after the abolition of jury trials.

Inspector Desmond D'Oliveiro, the policeman whom Teo attempted to harm by shooting, appeared as a prosecution witness. Inspector D'Oliveiro testified that while he was driving along Geylang Road that afternoon, he saw a large crowd and was approached by the crowd, who told him that a gang of four to five men were armed with guns had fled to Lorong 40 after committing a robbery, and therefore, Inspector D'Oliveiro allowed four men to enter his car and he reached Lorong 39, where another crowd gathered outside a small hut in the forest, which was the same hut where Teo went into hiding. By then, Inspector D'Oliveiro was also joined by three more policemen, one of whom went to call for reinforcements. According to Inspector D'Oliveiro, he brandished his service revolver and cautiously approached the hut, calling the gunman to come out, and all of a sudden, Teo came out of the hut and fired two shots at Inspector D'Oliveiro, who was taken by surprise but managed to evade the bullets and escaped unharmed. Inspector D'Oliveiro did not fire back afterwards. Several other bystanders similarly testified that Teo was aiming at Inspector D'Oliveiro when he fired the gun.

Another witness was Police Constable (PC) Quek Chek Kwang (also spelt Quek Chek Kuan), who was one of the officers present at the scene. PC Quek testified that he saw Inspector D'Oliveiro calling the gunman that he should come out or he would be killed, and he later witnessed Teo coming out to aim the gun towards Inspector D'Oliveiro and fired two shots at him. This would not be the first time PC Quek get involved in a shootout. 15 years later in 1984, PC Quek, who by then was promoted to Corporal, would engage in a gunfight with infamous gunman Khor Kok Soon, whom they caught trying to commit firearm robbery. Khor, who escaped after taking a lorry driver hostage before he allegedly murdered the driver, became one of Singapore's ten most wanted criminals for the next 19 years before his arrest in 2003, and he was sentenced to death in 2005 for shooting at Sergeant Lim Kiah Chin (Corporal Quek's partner) back in 1984.

Detective-Corporal Ng Poh Kiang, a third police officer at the scene, also testified in court that after Teo fired the two missed shots, he covered Inspector D'Oliveiro by firing back at the gunman twice, although the shots missed and Teo was left unharmed. After this brief gunfight, tear gas was fired into the hut, which forced Teo to emerge from the hut and surrendered. Senior Inspector H L Miranda, another policeman and witness, was also inquired about the recovery of the bullets, and he replied that except for one bullet belonging to Corporal Ng's gun, no other bullets, including those belonging to Teo's firearm, could be recovered from the hut. Both Justice Kulasekaram and Justice Winslow, together with the prosecution and defence counsel, headed to the crime scene during the course of Teo's trial to inspect the crime scene.

Teo was called to the stand to give his defence. Teo, who agreed to do so, denied under oath that he actually aimed the gun at Inspector D'Oliveiro and fired the two shots, and he instead testified that he fired in the air twice to warn the bystanders from getting near and he never had the intent to harm anyone throughout, and he also claimed that when he surrendered to the police, he already threw his gun away in the vegetation outside the hut, and i was not on his hand as what was recounted by all the witnesses earlier in court. Jeyaretnam also argued on Teo's behalf that the firearms charge was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt due to the lack of injury on Inspector D'Oliveiro and the failure to recover any bullets linking Teo to the crime, which would have helped reconstruct how Teo actually fired his gun, whether towards the policeman or in the air.

Verdict

On 24 February 1970, after a trial lasting four days, Justice Kulasekaram and Justice Winslow delivered their judgement. Justice Winslow, who pronounced the verdict in court, stated that both judges unanimously agreed that there was no doubt in their opinion that Teo had the intent to cause harm to Inspector D'Oliveiro when he discharged two rounds at the officer, and they agreed with the prosecution that despite the relatively close distance of 15 feet from where Teo fired the gun, Teo missed the shots twice and he was "inept" at wielding his gun with respect to the nature and condition of the gun. Justice Winslow also read that the police's failure to recover the spent ammunition from Teo's sidearm did not undermine the prosecution's case, and the absence of injuries on Inspector D'Oliveiro did not hold much weight against the prosecution's case either. They also accepted that Teo was still holding on to the gun at the time when the tear gas was fired and when he surrendered. On these grounds, Teo was found guilty of a single charge of firing two shots at Inspector D'Oliveiro with intent to injure him.

Aside from finding Teo guilty of the firearm charge, the two judges also weighed in on sentence, and in deciding between the sentence of either death by hanging or life in prison, the judges decided that no leniency was warranted in Teo's case in light of the aggravating circumstances and opted for the higher tier of sentence, and hence, 37-year-old Teo Cheng Leong was sentenced to death by hanging. On that same day, Teo was also sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for committing firearm robbery on the same date of the shooting. Before concluding their judgement, the judges praised Inspector D'Oliveiro for his courage and as the most senior police officer at the scene itself, Inspector D'Oliveiro was described to have acted in the "best traditions of the force".

By January 1971, the courts of Singapore had heard 18 high-profile death penalty cases over the past year of 1970, and out of these cases, Teo was one of the ten people given the death penalty, although one of these ten people, Ong Kiang Kek, who was sentenced to death for murdering Mohamed Salleh Haji Hassan, would successfully had his death sentence overturned on appeal and jailed for four years on a reduced charge of firearm possession.

Appeal processes

In September 1970, Teo Cheng Leong, who was then incarcerated on death row at Changi Prison, engaged veteran lawyer and opposition politician David Saul Marshall (assisted by J B Jeyaretnam) to represent him in his appeal. Marshall argued before the Court of Appeal that Teo had a substantive accrued right to a jury trial, given that his crime was committed before the abolition of the jury trial, and having a trial without a jury in Teo's case was substantially a miscarriage of justice. Marshall, having described Teo as the first person sentenced to the gallows for a case where "no one was even hurt", stated that Teo never had the premeditation to cause injury to the police officer Desmond D'Oliveriro, and he only fired the shots out of desperation and anxiety to evade capture, and thus argued against Teo's conviction and death sentence. As for the prosecution, then Attorney-General Tan Boon Teik made a special appearance to assist the prosecutor S Rajendran, and Tan argued that the appeal should be dismissed as the jury system was completely abolished on 5 January 1970, which meant that Teo did not have a vested right to a jury trial and he could only be entitled to a trial by two judges at the High Court. Judgement was reserved after the prosecution completed their submissions.

On 21 October 1970, the Court of Appeal's three judges - Supreme Court judges Tan Ah Tah and Frederick Arthur Chua (F A Chua), and Chief Justice Wee Chong Jin - opted to reject Teo's appeal. They ruled that with regards to Marshall's arguments for a jury trial, they agreed with the prosecution that Teo's trial procedure issue was a procedural matter and a non-jury trial was not a miscarriage of justice in his case, since it was made clear that the jury trial system was fully abolished on 5 January 1970 and they cannot be revived under any circumstances. The appellate judges also found that Teo was indeed guilty of the charge and his death sentence was also upheld, after the appellate court agreed with the trial court's findings.

After losing his appeal against the sentence, Teo later petitioned for special leave to appeal to the Privy Council in London to review his case. On 8 February 1971, Teo's plea was denied by the Privy Council. After losing his Privy Council appeal, Teo had a final recourse to appeal to then President of Singapore Benjamin Sheares for clemency. However, it was rejected.

Execution

After losing his final death row plea, 38-year-old Teo Cheng Leong was hanged at Changi Prison on one Friday morning in May 1971, but the exact date was unknown. At the time of his sentencing, Teo was the first person to be sentenced to death by two judges in the High Court after the abolition of jury trials in Singapore.

Two years after Teo was put to death, in November 1973, the Arms Offences Act was passed as a replacement of the previous firearm law to prescribe the mandatory death penalty for unlawful use of firearms (including the offence Teo was convicted for), which made life imprisonment no longer allowed as a penalty for such crimes.

36 years after Teo was executed, Singaporean crime show ''True Files'' re-enacted the Sims Avenue shooting case and the trial of Teo in 1970. The re-enactment first aired on 21 January 2007 as the third episode of the show's fifth and final season.

As for Teo's three accomplices, both Khoo Meng Hwa and Ng Chwee Bock were released from prison since 1979, while the fourth robber remains on the run as of today.

See also

*Capital punishment in Singapore

References

{{Reflist

1933 births
1971 deaths
Date of death unknown
Capital punishment in Singapore
20th-century executions by Singapore
Singaporean robbers
Executed Singaporean people
People convicted of illegal possession of weapons
People executed for attempted murder