Background
Yeo Liang Hou was convicted of trafficking by possessing for that purpose three packets containing not less than 669.3g of methamphetamine. He had collected a plastic bag containing two bundles from a bus-stop dustbin and later threw the bundles from his car. His defence was that he had ordered 350g of methamphetamine but mistakenly collected a different delivery. The High Court rejected that account, convicted him, and imposed the mandatory death sentence.
The Court of Appeal dismissed Yeo’s appeal against conviction and sentence in October 2025. Yeo then sought permission under s 394H of the Criminal Procedure Code 2010 to apply for review of that appellate decision. He relied on eight sets of materials—including call logs, police-camera footage, issues concerning his phones, and a video re-enactment—and alleged that his former appellate counsel had failed to present all the arguments he wished to advance.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeal dismissed the permission application. Even applying the potentially lower threshold of whether the intended review had a reasonable prospect of success, the court held that none of Yeo’s materials had a reasonable prospect of satisfying s 394J. Much of the material had already been canvassed at trial or on appeal, could have been presented earlier with reasonable diligence, or merely repackaged factual arguments previously rejected.
The call logs did not establish that the drugs collected by Yeo were mistakenly delivered; the police-camera evidence did not identify the intended recipient; and the re-enactment did not explain why Yeo threw away the drugs. His remaining arguments concerning the phone passcode, the bundles’ weight, alleged delivery “hiccups,” his disposal of the drugs, and inconsistencies in his evidence were neither new nor compelling enough to show almost conclusively that a miscarriage of justice had occurred.
The court also rejected Yeo’s inadequate-assistance allegations. His appellate counsel had raised several of the relevant points, and counsel’s decision not to advance arguments lacking an adequate evidential basis did not amount to flagrant or egregious incompetence or indifference. In any event, the omitted arguments would not have changed the appeal’s outcome.
Key Takeaways
- Permission for criminal review requires material capable of meeting the stringent requirements in s 394J, not merely renewed disagreement with factual findings.
- Evidence already canvassed, or evidence that reasonable diligence could have produced earlier, generally cannot support reopening a concluded appeal.
- A lawyer is not required to advance every argument requested by a client, and a reasonable tactical decision to omit an unsupported argument is not inadequate legal assistance.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces the exceptional nature of Singapore’s criminal-review procedure, particularly after an accused has received a trial and appeal. It also identifies a possible question about the permission-stage standard following the enactment of s 394H(6A): whether an applicant need only show a reasonable prospect of satisfying s 394J, rather than showing that the material is almost certain to satisfy it.
The court did not finally resolve that interpretive issue because Yeo’s application failed even under the lower standard. The judgment nevertheless signals that future courts may need to clarify how the statutory “reasonable prospect of success” consideration interacts with earlier authorities imposing a stricter permission threshold.