High Court verdict

Chia Kee Chen was brought to trial in the High Court of Singapore for murder on 25 October 2016. The charge of murder Chia faced was not of intentional murder, which is solely punishable by death. Rather, the charge of murder Chia faced dictates an offence of murder with an intention to fatally injure a person and cause death. This type of murder with no intention to kill warrants either life imprisonment or the death penalty if found guilty. In the trial, both Chia's wife and Chua Leong Aik testified against Chia.^[20][21]

Despite the prosecution's case and incriminating evidence against him, Chia denied in his trial that he did the abduction out of revenge for the affair Dexmon Chua had with his wife, and even denied having taken part in the assault. Having cited that he have another wife and three more children in Indonesia, Chia stated that having affairs are "very common in Singapore", and he also stated he naturally felt enraged as a man if his wife have an affair. He also pushed the blame on a Malaysian man named "Ali", who did most of the harm and damage on the victim with Febri's help during the assault. He stated that he abducted Dexmon Chua for allegedly filming his wife having sex with the victim and had wanted to retrieve the tapes to protect his wife's dignity, and had never thought of revenge against Dexmon Chua.^[22][23][24]

In turn, the prosecution argued that Chia was lying in his account in the court and fabricated the existence of his fourth accomplice Ali, pointing out that both Febri and Chua Leong Aik did not tell the police about the participation of Ali in their kidnapping plan, and it was puzzling that Ali could not be contacted by phone but appeared in the accused's account at convenient moments. They stated that Chia had clearly told police in his account on the manner of how he used the hammer to hit Dexmon Chua and he had clearly participated in the assault, with the inference from the unwashed blood patterns that the forensic experts discovered inside their borrowed van. They also pointed out that Chia had the motive to attack Dexmon Chua since he has ill-feelings against the 37-year-old man for the affair. The trial concluded on 3 November 2016 after it lasted for seven days in the High Court.^[25]

On 17 January 2017, Chia's defences were all rejected by High Court judge Choo Han Teck, who found Chia guilty of murder under Section 300(c) of the Penal Code. In convicting Chia, Justice Choo Han Teck noted that Chia had intentionally assaulted the victim together with Febri with the common intention to cause the fatal injuries on the victim, and labelled him as an "unreliable witness", since he made many contradictions in his account which only corroborated his guilt. He also rejected that there was a fourth man named Ali who helped assault Dexmon Chua, since Chia did not make any mention of Ali in his police statements, and Chia played the most critical role in the case since he was the one with the motive and hatred for Dexmon Chua. Sentencing for Chia was postponed till a later date.^[26][27][28]

The prosecution, led by DPP Tan Wen Hsien, sought the death penalty on account of the brutal and bloody nature of Dexmon Chua's murder and the cruel, savage and callous execution of Chia's fatal assault on the victim. DPP Tan even argued in her submissions that Chia had an utter lack of remorse for his actions and had acted in a calm and collected manner during the killing, which made it more appropriate for Chia to serve a death sentence. They also pointed out that he only confessed to using a hammer to hit Dexmon Chua ten days after the murder. The defence, led by defence lawyer Anand Nalachandran, argued for life imprisonment as there was no conclusive evidence that Chia planned to murder Dexmon Chua. He also argued that there was only a plan to abduct, not to kill the victim, in contrast to Febri's account (which he made to the Indonesian police) which detailed a murder plan. Anand said Febri's account was "self-serving" and should not be accepted, which is moreover so with its inconsistency to Chua Leong Aik's account of a non-fatal kidnap plot. The defence counsel also tried to claim Chia to have suffered from a mental disorder and had impaired responsibility to avoid capital punishment, which the prosecution rejected due to Chia being certified as mentally sound and normal prior to the trial.^[29][30]

On 4 August 2017, Chia was sentenced to life imprisonment, which fell short of the maximum penalty of death the prosecution was seeking for, because Justice Choo stated in his brief oral judgement (which was not published) that there is a possibility that Febri may have inflicted the fatal blow even though Chia had the motive and intention to kill, and the murder charge which Chia faced was under Section 300(c) of the Penal Code instead of Section 300(a) (under which the death penalty is mandatory if found guilty), which was why he decided to not pass a death sentence on Chia. The sentence was backdated to 1 January 2014, the date Chia was first remanded.^[31][32]

Prosecution's appeal and death sentence

After the conclusion of the trial, the prosecution, which was now led by DPP Hri Kumar Nair, appealed for the death penalty, and hence, after hearing the appeal, the Court of Appeal unanimously allowed the appeal on 27 June 2018 and raised Chia's life sentence to death, condemning him to hang on a later date for Dexmon Chua's murder.

The Court of Appeal, in sentencing Chia to death, citing the guiding principles set by the 2015 landmark appeal of the Kho Jabing case, stated that the unremorseful Chia had "exhibited such viciousness and such a blatant disregard for the life of the deceased, and are so grievous an affront to humanity and so abhorrent that the death penalty is the appropriate, indeed the only adequate sentence", given that he masterminded the abduction out of revenge for his wife's adultery, shown a high degree of premeditation and planning. They also dismissed his psychiatric report of diminished responsibility, since there is no contributory link between the offence and the alleged major depressive disorder, and it also lacked reason and only contained ambiguity.

The three-judge panel, led by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, also cited that although it may be true that Febri could have inflicted the fatal injuries, he did so under Chia's directions and Chia himself not only do not tell Febri to stop the assault, but joined in the attack. Before his arrest, Chia even calmly went for a holiday trip to Malaysia with his wife and two daughters while taking the chance to help Febri to flee the country. Also, they pointed out that in his first statements to the police, Chia voiced to the police interrogators that his only regret in this case was not giving Dexmon Chua more suffering before his unfortunate death, showing that he was not remorseful at all for killing Dexmon Chua.

CJ Menon, who read out the judgement he made together with two other judges Judith Prakash and Tay Yong Kwang, said in his own words regarding Chia's role, "One who hires an assassin to kill another or who otherwise controls a killer, cannot be less culpable than the one who does the killing." Additionally, Chia's appeal against his conviction was dismissed by the same three judges.^[33][34][35]