A Singaporean woman who was acquitted by a district judge of slapping the Filipino maid of her sister nearly four years ago will face a retrial after the High Court overturned the verdict.
The prosecution had appealed against the acquittal of Kathleen Chua Siew Wei, 42, arguing that the district judge made a number of interventions that prevented Deputy Public Prosecutor Yang Ziliang from properly cross-examining her during a trial. It added that the judge’s findings were against the weight of the evidence lodged against the defendant.
The judge, not named in the appeal, had told Yang to focus only on what was relevant to the charge of causing hurt to Jonna Memeje Muegue. He reportedly disallowed Yang from questioning Chua on, among other things, her past experience in hiring maids, the frequency with which she scolded the maid, and an allegation that the maid was not paid her salary for the first seven months because it was set off against a loan Chua had given her.
Judicial Commissioner See Kee Oon said, in allowing the appeal, that allegations of judicial interference rarely succeed but he had to “reluctantly” conclude this was such a case. He found the trial judge unduly isolate the case by considering only the testimony directly related to the slapping incident.
“In so doing, he had not only unfairly restricted the ambit of the prosecution’s cross-examination and impeded their ability to present their case fully, but had also impaired his own ability to evaluate and weigh the case presented by each side,” he said.
Commissioner See added that a retrial before another judge would be appropriate.
Chua, her elder sister, Chua Siew Peng, 44, and their mother, Lum Wai Lui, 75, have faced separate trials for abusing Muege, who later escaped from their Maplewoods condominium in Bukit Timah by jumping out from a window in 2012.
Ms Muegue’s employer, the elder Chua, is awaiting sentencing for wrongfully confining and slapping her. The sisters’ mother was put on 21 months’ probation in February.