[shadowsun7]

I'd actually urge you to look into the details of the case — Nagaenthran had two psychiatrists and a psychologist evaluate him on separate occasions, each of them certifying that he was of borderline intelligence, but not mentally ill (or 'mentally retarded', per DSM-5). The third examination established that Nagaenthran knew he was carrying drugs, that he was the member of a gang, that he was carrying out such an act because of 'a sense of loyalty and gratitude to his boss', that he had not been coerced into delivering the drugs, and that he was aware of the sentence for drug trafficking in Singapore.

Nagaenthran's lawyer disagreed with these assessments, but, unable to find a psych willing to certify Nagaenthran's intellectual disability, got so desperate that he signed an affidavit declaring himself convinced that Nagaenthran was intellectually disabled. The court rejected this affidavit after establishing that Nagaenthran's lawyer had no medical expertise and after he admitted that he was essentially 'speculating on what the appellant's mental age was'. Then the AG's office got a fourth medical assessment in 2021, which was blocked from submission to the court by Nagaenthran's lawyer, arguing that the 'appellant was interested in 'medical confidentiality'. At that point the court sort of threw up its hands and went 'you claim he's intellectually disabled but now you want to block medical reports on that exact issue, due to privacy reasons?'

Keep in mind that at this point, the case had been in Singapore's courts since 2010, and the various assessments and appeals had lasted more than a decade.

Nagaenthran's family, with the help of activists, requested appeals from both Malaysian's prime minister and a direct appeal to Singapore's president, who had the power to stay the execution by issuing a pardon. Singapore's president said she looked into it and was satisfied that the case was sound.

Finally, Nagaethran's family — again with the help of activists — filed a final appeal, arguing that the sentence was unconstitutional because Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, who presided over Nagaenthran's previous failed appeals, was also the Attorney-General during his conviction.

At this point the panel of three judges threw the application out on the grounds that it was a 'calculated attempt' to diminish the finality of the court process. "No court in the world would allow an applicant to prolong matters ad infinitum" by filing such applications, said the judges. They'd been pushing such applications over the course of a full decade by that point, switching arguments three times.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/nagaenthran-dharma...

And read the full judgment: https://elitigation.sg/gd/s/2022_SGCA_26

I'm sympathetic to the goals of the activists — they want to push a test case to repeal the death penalty. The problem is that it doesn't seem to be a particularly good test case. Nagaenthran had successfully stayed his execution multiple times over the past decade, and he had pretty decent legal representation throughout. (Notwithstanding the affidavit — which probably harmed his case more than it helped).

You may argue that Singapore is a 'rather extreme outlier among developed countries' — but its policies on drug enforcement is 100% consistent with just about every other country in its vicinity. In fact, had Nagaenthran been caught in his home country of Malaysia, he would be sentenced to death just the same, since Malaysia has pretty much the same laws on drug trafficking. The activists have been raising international awareness of the case, but Malaysia's government is pretty blase about the whole thing, since they have similar laws and a similar justice system, and Malaysian anti-narcotics officers have a long history of working with Singaporean anti-narcotics officers to stop the drug trade from trickling into their countries from the Golden Triangle to their north.

Edit to add: I was actually prepared to get angry over this case, but then I read the full judgment and now I think ... "hmm, this is a more complicated case than I thought."

[skissane]

The judgement you linked to says:

> It is also not disputed that in subsequent post-trial proceedings for re-sentencing, he was assessed to have an IQ of 69. The trial judge found that the Plaintiff was not suffering from intellectual disability to any degree but accepted that he had borderline intellectual functioning.

Usually "intellectual disability" is defined as an IQ < 70, so that IQ test result would just put him in the intellectually disabled category, rather than the borderline category (which is 70–85).

Also, the psychiatrist Dr Ung's 2016 report – paragraph 18 of https://www.elitigation.sg/gdviewer/s/2017_SGHC_222 – stated that (my emphasis):

> 52. I am of the opinion that Mr Nagaenthran suffered from an abnormality of mind at the time of his arrest, namely: Severe Alcohol Use Disorder, Severe Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder ADHD) [sic] Combined Type and Borderline Intellectual Functioning/ Mild Intellectual Disability

> 53. Psychological Assessment had revealed his Full Scale Intelligence Quotient (IQ) to be 66 to 74. This is in the range of Mild Intellectual Disability suggested in [the American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association Publishing, 5th Ed, 2013) (“DSM-V”)].

> 54. Intellectual Disability requires the presence of functional disability as well and I am of the opinion that Mr Nagaenthran had functional disability in the conceptual domains and to a lesser extent in his social and practical domain

So we have a psychiatrist concluding that he was intellectually disabled (even if only "mildly" so), and met the DSM-5 criteria for both Severe ADHD and mild intellectual disability.

Given the reports concluding he was not intellectually disabled were procured by the government, one ought to question their independence. The only report produced independently of government concluded that he was. I think, to settle the question with sufficient confidence, one would really want someone respectable from overseas – such as a respected professor of psychiatry with a specialisation in intellectual disability – to review the case, but that was never sought. (I'm sure the Singaporean government could have arranged it if they had wanted to do so.)

> but its policies on drug enforcement is 100% consistent with just about every other country in its vicinity. In fact, had Nagaenthran been caught in his home country of Malaysia, he would be sentenced to death just the same, since Malaysia has pretty much the same laws on drug trafficking.

Malaysia currently has a moratorium on the death penalty, due to serious national debate (in which the government has been an active participant) on whether to abolish it, or at least significantly narrow its scope. That is a quite different situation from Singapore–unlike the Malaysian government, the Singaporean government has shown no signs of wanting to specifically encourage any public debate, or evolution of public opinion, on the topic.

[shadowsun7]

The problem is that Dr Ung walks back certain elements of his report, as is summarised in the final judgment:

> the High Court found that the appellant had borderline intellectual functioning; not that he was suffering from mild intellectual disability. This was conceded by the appellant’s own psychiatrist, Dr Ung Eng Khean (“Dr Ung”). Further, Dr Ung also accepted (see Nagaenthran (CM) at [76]) that borderline intellectual functioning is not a mental “disorder” as set out in the American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association Publishing, 5th Ed, 2013). Further, in Nagaenthran (CA) (at [34]–[41]), we held that even assuming the appellant suffered from an abnormality of mind, any such abnormality did not substantially impair his mental responsibility, because he did not lose his ability to tell right from wrong.

I then think Nagaenthran's lawyer made a grievous concession:

> [The appellant’s counsel, Mr Thuraisingam] eventually conceded that this was a case of a poor assessment of the risks on the appellant’s part. But, as the Minister stated in Singapore Parliamentary Debates, Official Reports (14 November 2012) vol 89 … ‘[g]enuine cases of mental disability are recognised [under s 33B(3)(b) of the MDA], while, errors of judgment will not afford a defence’. To put it quite bluntly, this was the working of a criminal mind, weighing the risks and countervailing benefits associated with the criminal conduct in question. The appellant in the end took a calculated risk which, contrary to his expectations, materialised. Even if we accepted that his ability to assess risk was impaired, on no basis could this amount to an impairment of his mental responsibility for his acts. He fully knew and intended to act as he did. His alleged deficiency in assessing risks might have made him more prone to engage in risky behaviour; that, however, does not in any way diminish his culpability.

I'm not sure if your reading of 'intellectually disabled man' aligns with the court's reading, and I don't think it's as clear cut as "oh, Singapore executed a man with no mental responsibility over what he is doing, according to the rule of law there, and so LHL is evil"

> Malaysia currently has a moratorium on the death penalty, due to serious national debate (in which the government has been an active participant) on whether to abolish it, or at least significantly narrow its scope

You're right on the moratorium. 'Due to healthy debate' is a rather charitable reading, though. There's a depressing account of the entire moratorium in Chapter 45, 'Law Reform', from former AG Tommy Thomas's autobiography My Story: Justice in the Wilderness, which lays out the background machinations of the former administration's attempt to repeal the death penalty, which was ultimately a failure. The moratorium was implemented by the Prisons Board under the instructions of acting AG Engku Nor Faizah Engku Atek, and supported by Thomas. More surprisingly, (if Thomas is to be believed) the Prisons Board themselves had no objection to abolishing the death penalty! I won't try to summarise the complex political machinations here, but saying that 'strong National debate' is a factor for the moratorium would not be Tommy Thomas's reading of the situation. I don't expect the moratorium to last — though I pray that it will. But it's difficult to say which side might use it as a political football given the current state of Malaysian politics.

My overall point: using the moratorium on the death penalty as an example of Malaysia's 'enlightened approach' vs Singapore is grossly mistaken; it's more accurate to describe it as a political football used to score points against one's opponents (made complicated by the fact that there is quiet support for the penalty from both the conservative Malay power base as well as the conservative Chinese political power base, on both sides of the parliament, as Thomas found out the hard way). I say that the chapter is depressing because 'national debate' seems to have very little to do with it.

[skissane]

I disagree with what you say on the intellectual disability issue, but don't have the time or motivation right now to respond in detail. I did want to comment on one thing you said though:

> More surprisingly, (if Thomas is to be believed) the Prisons Board themselves had no objection to abolishing the death penalty!

That's actually not surprising at all. If you look at the experience in most European countries – and also Australia, Canada and New Zealand – often the prison bureaucracy was a strong proponent of abolition. The staff of prisons often find they dislike killing prisoners, it eats at their conscience, and even many who support the death penalty turn into opponents when it becomes their job to play part in implementing it. It is easy to support killing people when they are nameless abstractions such as "murderers" or "terrorists" or "drug traffickers", much harder when they are specific individuals with names and faces and personalities, whom you see and talk to every day. Even if the executives aren't seeing the condemned every day, the perspective of their indirect reports who do often trickles up to them (and some of them will have risen through the ranks from that position). To some extent, part of the reason why the US has kept the death penalty while the UK/Canada/Australia/NZ/Ireland/etc have abolished it, is that in the Commonwealth governments have historically tended to be much more responsive to the demands and wishes of bureaucratic elites than in the US, especially when those demands/wishes conflict with the majority of popular opinion.

The European and Commonwealth model of abolition has generally been that governments need to lead public opinion rather than waiting for it. The former Malaysian government was attempting the same approach, even if it didn't work out quite as well for them – maybe unsurprising given the significant political and cultural differences between Malaysia and those other countries in which it has been quite successful – but I'm not sure if they should be criticised for trying. (Maybe moving too fast on this issue hastened their demise, and they should have waited to act until their position was more secure; but maybe their demise was inevitable no matter what they did on this issue.) If the Singaporean government tried to lead public opinion toward abolition, it is possible they might have much more success than was had in Malaysia – but they do not appear to be interested in trying.