Court dismisses unusual appeal against sentence based on disrupted remand
Published on Sep 30, 2014 6:32 PM
Ho Wei Yi, 33, seen here (above) in 2009, is serving an eight-year jail term for starting a fire that killed his father. His appeal was dismissed on Tuesday. -- PHOTO: ST FILE
By Selina Lum
SINGAPORE - An appeal by a mentally ill man against his eight-year jail term for starting a fire that killed his father was dismissed by the Court of Appeal on Tuesday.
Ho Wei Yi, 33, who had pleaded guilty to culpable homicide in February, did not rely on the usual grounds that his sentence was "manifestly excessive".
Instead, his lawyer, Mr Ramesh Tiwary, argued for the jail term to be cut because Ho is spending a longer time in prison than he should due to "peculiar" circumstances of the case which affected the backdating of his sentence.
Ho, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, was arrested on Aug 6, 2009 - a day after he started a fire at his family home on McNair Road in Boon Keng that killed his father Michael Ho Shiong Chun, a 58-year-old church pastor.
Ho was remanded at Changi Prison after his arrest but on Nov 10, 2010, he was moved to the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), as stipulated by law, after he was found unfit to stand trial.
On Sept 20, 2011, he was found fit to stand trial and moved back to prison.
When he was sentenced in February, High Court judge Tay Yong Kwang backdated the term to Sept 21, 2011 - his second period of remand - because the IMH is not gazetted as a prison.
Mr Tiwary argued that the disruption of Ho's remand was not because of something he had done. He argued that Ho is spending a longer time in prison than if he had been jailed 10 years but with the sentence backdated to his date of arrest.
However, the three-judge appeal court noted that in passing sentence, Justice Tay did consider that Ho spent time both in remand and at the IMH.
The court noted that the only place where Ho can get proper treatment is at an institution as he lacks family support. Dismissing the appeal, the court said it was taking a more conservative stand on this matter as it "may not be such a bad thing" for Ho to spend a bit more time in an institution in the interest of protecting the public.
