Scholars in Conversation: Chan Wing Cheong with Siddharth Narrain

The Scholars in Conversation series features interviews with academics and scholar-practitioners across diverse disciplines and geographies. Anchored by NLSIU faculty members, these conversations explore the work of leading voices in their fields in order to bring their insights to bear on public discourse.

Singapore’s capital sentencing regime is shaped by history, geopolitics, institutional philosophy, and public sentiment. This conversation with Chan Wing Cheong explores contemporary debates surrounding the death penalty in Singapore, especially its links to criminal law principles, deterrence, and public opinion.

Chan Wing Cheong is Professor of Law at the Yong Pung How School of Law, Singapore Management University. He teaches and researches mainly in the areas of criminal law and family law. He is an advocate and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Singapore, a barrister of Gray’s Inn (England & Wales), and a qualified attorney of New York State (USA). He is the co-author of Criminal Law in Singapore, which is used by law students and practitioners and has been cited numerous times by courts in both Malaysia and Singapore. Two of his works, including his article ‘Family Law in Singapore’ and his book Criminal Law in Myanmar, have been translated into other languages. Chan Wing Cheong has been a member of law review committees convened by various ministries and other governmental bodies. He was awarded the Friend of the Law Society award in 2016 for his contributions as a resource consultant to the Criminal Law Practice Committee of the Law Society of Singapore. In 2019, he was appointed amicus curiae in a case before the Singapore Court of Appeal.

On 14 November 2025, Chan Wing Cheong delivered two guest lectures at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU). One was titled ‘Deconstructing public opinion on the death penalty’, while the other was on ‘SMU’s Pro Bono Programme’. After the lectures, he sat down for a discussion on the lecture themes with NLSIU faculty member Siddharth Narrain—whose work focuses on public law, law and media, human rights law, and gender- and sexuality-related laws. They spoke about the shared history of the penal codes of India and Singapore as well as the differences. Chan Wing Cheong also delved into the evolution of the death penalty in Singapore, the weight of public opinion in the formulation of criminal law, and the importance of legal clinics for students.

Siddarth Narrain: My own interest in Singapore’s death penalty actually came through the IPC [Indian Penal Code], tracing how it travelled across the British Empire. It is incredible how the structure of homicide law from the 1860s appears almost untouched in places as far apart as Singapore, Malaysia, and parts of Africa. And then, because I was researching the Section 377 case in India, I found myself looking at these jurisdictions with almost identical provisions.

Chan Wing Cheong: Yes, shared colonial inheritance explains why Singapore’s murder provisions would look familiar to anyone working with the IPC. But Singapore’s sentencing evolution has taken on its own direction. For years, the big question has been: What makes the death penalty distinct enough to justify a mandatory model? And even after the 2012 reforms in Singapore, we still treat capital sentencing as a fundamentally different exercise from sentencing for other crimes.

Part of the logic was institutional—the Parliament should decide life-and-death outcomes and not judges. The other part was deterrence. The idea was that if you carved out exceptions for drug traffickers on the basis of juvenility, first offence, and so on, then drug mules and criminal syndicates would exploit them. But of course, that also meant erasing individual culpability.

Is this what the 2012 reforms tried to restore?

For murder, yes. Now only Section 300(a), pertaining to intentional killing, carries a mandatory death sentence. For other criminal offences, judges now have the discretion to decide between death penalty and life imprisonment with caning.

What is the standard that is used to give the death penalty? For instance, in India we have the ‘rarest of rare’ doctrine developed by the Supreme Court.

Instead of importing India’s ‘rarest of rare’ doctrine, Singapore developed its own standard—the ‘blatant disregard for human life’ test. The court must ask whether the offender acted in a way that exhibited a blatant disregard for human life. The manner of the act is critical. In violent killings, the savagery of the attack is taken as indicative of such disregard. But the factors vary from case to case, and it’s not a rigid formula.

For drug offences, couriers—that is, people who transport drugs—can avoid the death penalty if they either substantively assist the Central Narcotics Bureau or are proven to have substantially impaired mental responsibility. This is where the system struggles, as couriers are structurally disadvantaged. They also rarely have meaningful information, which can be used to disrupt the activities of drug syndicates. Amnesty International famously termed Singapore’s policy as ‘cooperate or die’, and for many couriers, it’s simply impossible to cooperate because they often don’t know enough.

However, there are certain procedural safeguards baked into Singapore’s Criminal Procedure Code, such as Section 277(3). Under this provision, the court must not record a guilty plea in a capital case unless the prosecution leads evidence. That’s unique. Even if the accused wants to plead guilty, the court can’t accept it unless the prosecution proves its case through evidence at trial. It’s a safeguard to prevent wrongful convictions through coerced or uninformed guilty pleas.

Is there any clemency for capital punishment in Singapore? What is the trend as far as actual executions are concerned?

Historically, clemency has been extremely rare in Singapore. In the last 60 years since independence, only 6 or 7 cases have been granted clemency. And in the late 1990s, Singapore had one of the highest per-capita execution rates in the world. There’s been a decline since then but no moratorium. That distinguishes Singapore sharply from its neighbours.

Could you tell us more about the context of Singapore and drug-related capital punishment?

People often forget the geopolitical context of Singapore. Singapore sits at the edge of the Golden Triangle, which is a region in Southeast Asia comprising Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos and has long been a major site of opiate production. With synthetic drug production now expanding, the threat is harder, not easier, to manage.

Your recent book, Capital Drug Laws in Asia, examines law and policy developments around drug-related capital offences across multiple jurisdictions. Could you tell us more about this research?

What struck me while studying the drug laws in Asia is the sheer diversity of approaches. No two jurisdictions treat capital drug cases the same way. Some jurisdictions retain the penalty but rarely enforce it. Others experiment with moratoriums. In China, the quantity of the trafficked drug that triggers the death penalty varies by province. Malaysia recently repealed the mandatory model. But these laws have remained the strictest in Singapore.

Why is public opinion important in the debate around capital punishment and the law? Isn’t death penalty one of those cases where public opinion should not matter when governments decide policy around it?

Politically, public support is often invoked to justify Singapore’s continued use of the death penalty. That is why our empirical study mattered. When respondents were asked without context, ‘Do you support the death penalty for murder?’, the support for it was high. But when detailed scenarios were presented, support dropped significantly.

Did support for mandatory sentencing drop even more?

Yes. And once respondents were informed of the risk of wrongful conviction, the shift in support was even greater. A majority still favoured retention of the death penalty, but the nuance matters.

Legal clinics, especially those that engage with human rights, criminal justice, and vulnerable groups, are often described as the ideal model. At NLSIU, we have embarked on an ambitious programme that involves starting several legal clinics around various themes, such as criminal justice, labour rights, and child rights. How do you see the role of students within a clinical education framework?

I’ve always believed that legal clinics offer something uniquely transformative. Students often come into law school with a certain abstract idealism and working in a legal clinic grounds them. It makes them realise that they need something more than just a desire to do good and what it feels like to work with real clients. They should experience that reaffirmation and grounding before picking up potentially bad litigation habits, which tend to get passed on informally in traditional practice. In a legal clinic housed within an academic environment, teaching becomes more intentional. Faculty can take the time to supervise students properly, which is not possible after students graduate and get into legal practice.

How is a legal clinic structured in Singapore, and can students be part of casework?

We’re still evolving, but generally, having a legal clinic is excellent for both students and the institution. In certain models, students can be part of casework. In others, the scope for student participation is limited. For example, in our own legal clinic, it is currently structured around oral advice only. Volunteer lawyers serve at the legal clinic, and students only register the applicant and take notes during the consultation with the lawyer.

This interview has been transcribed by Mudra Mehta, a second year BA LLB (Honours) student at NLSIU.