Prosecution seeks death penalty for man who killed wife's former lover

The prosecution is seeking the death penalty for a man who assaulted his wife’s former lover to death and later left the body along Lim Chu Kang Road in 2013.

Chia Kee Chen, 56, was convicted of murder in January this year after he was found guilty of forcing Dexmon Chua Yizhi, 37, into a van and subsequently bashing him so brutally with a hammer-like object that Chua died from blunt force head injuries. Chia committed the offence between 28 and 29 December 2013 with the help of two accomplices, Indonesian Febri Irwansyah Djatmiko and Chua Leong Aik, a longtime friend of Chia’s.

Febri was involved in the attack while Chua drove the van, which was used to abduct the victim. Chua left the van midway through the act.

Lawyers from both sides spent Thursday morning (13 July) making submissions on Chia’s sentence. The prosecution, represented by Tan Wen Hsien, said that Chia deserved the death penalty – in part because of the savage nature of the attack and the premeditation involved.

Defence counsel Anand Nalachandran sought life imprisonment for Chia, whom he said had hatched a plan of abduction without an intention to kill. Chia wanted to “shield his wife from the possibility of any future harm”, said Nalachandran.

However, the prosecution maintained that Chia alone had the motive and intention to kill Dexmon as he bore ill-will towards his wife’s younger ex-lover for making him a “cuckold”. DPP Tan pointed out that Chia had stalked and harassed Dexmon after discovering his wife’s extramarital affair in November 2012.

Chia’s “long, deepset and fatal grudges” towards Dexmon had persisted a year after his wife had stopped seeing him and the ill-will continued throughout the time “without provocation of contribution” by [Dexmon], said the prosecution.

Chia’s attack on Dexmon was also “savage and cruel”. Said DPP Tan, “Once [Dexmon] got out of his car… [Chia] and Febri set upon him in a vicious and unbridled manner…The blood spatter found at the walls, floor and ceiling of the MSCP (multi-storey car park) are testament to the bloodshed that occurred even before [Dexmon] was bundled into the back of the van.”

Chia had also executed his plan to murder Dexmon in a “calm and calculated manner”, claimed the prosecution. In the months leading to the offence, Chia set in motion various parts of the plan, including asking Chua and Febri for help, gathering the weapons and renting a van.

There was also an utter lack of remorse on Chia’s part, added the prosecution. He ran “spurious defences and sought to downplay his true involvement in the offence” during the trial, such as denying the use of a hammer-like object, even though he had volunteered the information to the police and drawn a picture of the object.

Nalachandran urged for life imprisonment to be imposed on Chia, arguing that inconsistencies between Febri and Chua’s accounts made it “unsafe” for the court to hang him as Chia’s role in the affair was ambiguous.

For example, Febri had claimed that there was a plan involving knives and electrodes but no such evidence came from Chua. Nalachandran argued that Febri, who had given a statement to Indonesian police, had “every reason to distance himself and downplay his role” and had given a “self-serving statement”.

The defence also submitted a psychiatric report by Dr John Bosco Lee, done after Chia’s conviction, to show that Chia was assessed to be suffering from Major Depressive Disorder which “affected his perceptions, his emotional responses, his behavioral responses” and “contributed much to his disturbed mental state around the time of the offence”.

However, the prosecution took issue with the report, dated 21 June this year, pointing out that it wasn’t relevant as it didn’t show any “causal or contributory link” to Chia’s act. DPP Tan added that Dr Lee was only engaged some three and a half years after the offence was committed.

Justice Choo Han Teck will give Chia’s sentence at a later date.