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©The
Straits Times, Singapore (Used by permission)
by Selina Lum
Jailed for 10 months, woman claims she was tricked into
pleading guilty
A HIGH Court judge yesterday set aside a China-born woman's conviction and
ordered a re-trial after she claimed her thenlawyer had pressured her to plead
guilty to graft charges in a lower court.
Justice Lee Seiu Kin, who was hearing the application of Gao Hua, 30, also told
her new lawyer to bring the case to the Law Society, to look into whether action
should be taken against her ex-lawyer.
The court heard that after she was sentenced to 10 months' jail, Gao secretly
taped a conversation between herself and her ex-lawyer Tan Kay Bin.
Mr Tan, in practice for 35 years, has engaged counsel to defend him against his
ex-client's allegations, having already denied them in a letter.
Gao, a permanent resident married to a Singaporean, hired Mr Tan in June last
year when she was being investigated for corruption.
She was charged last December with bribing two men to take the rap if the
authorities discovered her massage parlour was unlicensed.
Gao had been fined $600 before for running an unlicensed massage parlour.
On March 13, she pleaded guilty to two counts before a district judge, who meted
out a 10-month jail term.
Gao later applied to the High Court to reverse the conviction and sentence on
grounds that she had been misled into pleading guilty.
She claimed that Mr Tan had initially advised her to fight the charges. But on
the day the trial was to start, he pressured her to plead guilty, she alleged.
Gao claimed he told her she had a weak case, that she would be fined only, and
that it would be costly if she lost the trial. She also wanted to get things
over with so that she could go back to China to visit her sick mother.
'I was overwhelmed and unhappy at this but did not see that I had much of a
choice, given all that Mr Tan was telling me,' she said in a 26-page affidavit.
Gao said that after the jail term was handed down, Mr Tan 'practically ran out
of the court'. She spent three days behind bars before her husband bailed her
out.
Angry and upset about being 'tricked' into pleading guilty, she later visited Mr
Tan's office with a tape recorder hidden in her bag to gather evidence against
him.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Francis Ng urged the judge to approach the transcript
'with great circumspection' since her questions to her ex-lawyer were framed by
her agenda.
But Gao's new lawyer, Mr Shashi Nathan, argued that her conviction was a serious
injustice as she had never intended to plead guilty from the start.
Justice Lee agreed it was unsafe to uphold the conviction and sent the case back
to the lower court for re-trial.
Gao, who had tugged at her blouse nervously throughout the hearing, stood up in
the dock, clasped her hands and cried 'Thank you!' in Mandarin.
About this case
GAO Hua, 30, was accused of bribing two men to act as her
fall guys for an illegal massage parlour she opened in April 2006 in South
Bridge Road.
The shop was raided in March last year, and the first man apparently took the
rap by pleading guilty to running it.
One month after the bust, she allegedly approached the second man to make a
similar arrangement.
Gao was eventually arrested. In March, she was sentenced to 10 months' jail
after she pleaded guilty to corruption charges.
In 2005, she had been caught and fined $600 for running another massage parlour
without a licence.
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Circular No 297/2008
