Tay Yong Kwang was a Singaporean former judge of the Supreme Court. He was first appointed Judicial Commissioner in 1997, appointed Judge in 2003, and appointed Judge of Appeal in 2016. He was noted for being the presiding judge in several notable cases (especially murder) that shocked the nation and made headlines in Singapore. He was most recently re-appointed for a further two-year term on the Court of Appeal from 3 September 2024. He retired in 2 September 2026.
Notable cases
Public Prosecutor v Zhou Jian Guang and Another In April 2000, as Judicial Commissioner, Tay became the presiding judge of the kidnapping trial of Zhou Jianguang and Shi Songjing, two Chinese illegal immigrants who were involved in the kidnapping a 14-year-old girl for ransom. Zhou, Shi and the mastermind Vincent Lee Chuan Leong committed the crime on 9 September 1999 when they abducted the teenager while she was on her way home at Bukit Timah, and she was confined for three days before her father paid a ransom of $330,000, allowing her to be released sixty hours after her abduction. All three kidnappers were arrested within a few days after the girl's release.
Tay, in his judgement, found that the death penalty was inappropriate given that the kidnappers did not harm the girl and treated her well during her confinement, save for the trauma she suffered and the verbal threat they made on her safety and life. He decided to sentence both Zhou and Shi to life imprisonment and did not impose caning on the two Chinese men, having noted that the mastermind Lee also did not receive caning when he himself was similarly sentenced to life in prison by another judge in a separate trial session.
SIA embezzlement scandal Between 9 February 1987 to 18 January 2000, over a period of 13 years, Singapore Airlines cabin crew supervisor Teo Cheng Kiat misappropriated an approximate sum of S$35 million from his company. Teo joined Singapore Airlines as a clerk in May 1975 and was promoted to cabin crew supervisor in 1988. It was his job at that time to oversee the allowance payments to the cabin crew. Teo siphoned money off the payments and transferred them to his bank accounts while doctoring records of the cabin members on the flights, using names of those who did not fly on the various flights to conceal his criminal activities. He also manipulated his wife and younger sister to allow him to gain control of their bank accounts and transfer the money he embezzled to their bank accounts. It was due to an internal audit error that led to the arrest of a 47-year-old Teo on 19 January 2000. On 30 June 2000, Tay found Teo guilty of ten charges of criminal breach of trust and sentenced him to 24 years in prison.
The criminal case of Anthony Ler
On 14 May 2001, 34-year-old Anthony Ler Wee Teang hired a 15-year-old youth to assassinate his wife, 30-year-old Annie Leong Wai Mun, who was in the midst of divorcing him, so that he can become the sole owner of their flat and himself gain custody of their then-4-year-old daughter. On 5 December 2001, Tay, who presided the case, found Ler guilty and sentenced him to death for masterminding the murder while sentencing the unnamed boy to indefinite detention at the President's Pleasure because he was underage and cannot be hanged. In his verdict, Tay stated that he did not believe Ler's plea of innocence and pointed out the evidence proving Ler's motive to commit the crime, stating Ler's act of crying at his wife's funeral were nothing more than "rehearsed acts performed by an accomplished actor" and called the boy's story "truthful"; he also said that the boy was not a cold-blooded killer, but was a teenager who was manipulated by an adult experienced in the ways of the world and adult machinations. Ler was hanged in December 2002 while the boy went on to spend 17 years in prison before his release in November 2018 when President Halimah Yacob granted clemency for him and remitted the remaining part of his sentence.
Murder of football player Sulaiman bin Hashim
On 31 May 2001, 17-year-old footballer Sulaiman bin Hashim, together with his two friends, were attacked by a 8-member Malay Salakau gang at South Bridge Road. Sulaiman was killed in the gangfight, with two fatal knife wounds out of the thirteen he suffered being the cause of his death, while his other two friends managed to flee and call the police. One of the gang members, 22-year-old Muhamad Hasik bin Sahar, stood trial before Tay in the High Court on 9 May 2002.
Before the incident, Hasik was previously convicted of causing hurt with dangerous weapons, and sentenced to reformative training at the age of 16 in 1996. When delivering his verdict in May 2022, and having made reference to Hasik's criminal records, Tay felt that Hasik has not "learnt his lesson" even after his previous experience in court, and now that he has committed a crime of greater violence and an innocent life has been lost as a result, the then-judicial commissioner sentenced Hasik to life imprisonment and 16 strokes of the cane after pleading guilty to a reduced charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder (or manslaughter), and backdated the sentence to the date of Hasik's arrest in June 2001. In his words, Tay reiterated in his judgement:
Those who feel victorious in being vicious and who have no qualms about the annual celebration of one's birth culminating in the untimely death of another will have to spend all subsequent birthdays within prison walls until such time as they are eligible for parole.
Later, in August 2002, Hasik's appeal for a lighter sentence was rejected by the Court of Appeal.
Trial of Peh Thian Hui On 24 May 2002, Tay presided the trial of Peh Thian Hui, a 48-year-old housing agent charged with raping the daughter of his lover, who had consented to these sexual assaults and also participated in the obsence acts personally. Peh was said to have raped the girl for 54 times, starting from 1996 to 2000. The girl, who turned 15 in 2001, reported the matter to the police, leading to the arrests of Peh and her mother on 8 November 2001. Peh pleaded guilty to ten out of 62 charges while the mother pleaded guilty to seven out of sixty charges in the same trial hearing.
In his written grounds of decision on sentence, Tay harshly criticised the couple for the aggravated rape of the girl, who was not named to protect her identity. He cited that the mother had failed in her duty by allowing her boyfriend to commit the rapes on her own child, and it defied all notions of motherhood for her to be a bystander and abettor of the sexual abuse her daughter went through. Tay also admonished Peh for preying on a child in order to satisfy his perverse sexual interests with "revolting regularity", and he stated that for the sake of retribution and deterrence, Peh should be separated from both the victim and society as long as possible.
Tay therefore sentenced Peh and his co-accused to 36 years in prison each, and also added 24 strokes of the cane to Peh's sentence; the mother was not caned since she was a female. The couple's appeal against their sentences were dismissed in September 2002.
The case of Chia Teck Leng In April 2004, Tay, now as a High Court judge having promoted the year before, would sentence 44-year-old Chia Teck Leng, a compulsive gambler and finance manager from Asia Pacific Breweries (APB), to a total of 42 years' imprisonment for Singapore's then biggest case of commercial fraud after convicting him of 14 out of 46 charges of criminal breach of trust, citing that the $117 million he swindled out of four foreign banks was "enough to feed many people for life".
Chua Ser Lien and Tan Ping Koon
In September 2004, Tay presided over the trial of two businessmen, Chua Ser Lien and Tan Ping Koon, both charged with kidnapping a seven-year-old girl for ransom on 25 December 2003. Chua and Tan were facing financial difficulties in their work, and committed the crime to get money to repay their debts. However, they were caught red-handed, and released the girl at another street minutes after the abduction, but they blackmailed the family to give them a ransom on the threat of harming the family. Eventually, the police managed to arrest both Chua and Tan after they received the ransom.
Both Tan and Chua pleaded guilty to the kidnapping charges, and Tay, having considered their psychiatric conditions and noting that both men never harmed the girl, decided not to sentence the two men to death and thus sentenced them to life imprisonment plus three strokes of the cane each instead. Chua would eventually commit suicide in July 2020 while still in prison, 17 years after the crime.
Kallang River Body Parts Murder
Another case was 50-year-old Leong Siew Chor, who strangled his 22-year-old lover Liu Hong Mei to death and cut up her body into seven pieces before disposing them at the Kallang River. Leong's alleged motive was that he wanted to avoid Liu from discovering that he had stolen her ATM card and stolen all her savings of more than $2,000 and report him, which might risk expose his secret love affair to his wife and three children and other people known to him. Tay sentenced Leong to death in 2006 after founding him guilty of murder as he rejected Leong's defence that Liu willingly allowed him to strangle her as a way of a lover's suicide pact. He stated that Liu, who was young and intending to pursue a polytechnic diploma in tourism, excited to attend her sister's wedding etc., would not have any reason to commit suicide. In his judgement, Tay stated that “In the classic tragic tale of ill-fated love, the luckless lover committed suicide. Here, Romeo killed Juliet. It was a most disgusting and despicable murder. Liu Hong Mei died a very cruel, heartbreaking death.” Leong was subsequently hanged on 30 November 2007, after the failure of his appeal and clemency plea to the Court of Appeal and President of Singapore respectively.
"One-eyed Dragon" Tan Chor Jin
On 15 February 2006, with the help of his driver accomplice and childhood friend Lim Choon Chwee, 39-year-old gunman Tan Chor Jin, alias Tony Kia, forcefully entered the Serangoon flat of 41-year-old nightclub owner Lim Hock Soon and pointed a gun at Lim and his family, threatening them and intending to rob them, as well as to settle scores with Lim on some unsettled issues. After robbing the family of their valuables, and telling Lim to tie up his wife, maid and then-13-year-old daughter, Tan told Lim to go into his study while the others gone to other rooms. Tan then proceed to fire his gun at Lim six times (one of the shots missed), and Lim, who sustained five gunshot wounds on his back, left arm, left thigh, right cheek and right temple, died as a result of the fatal gunshot wound at his right temple.
Tan, who managed to escape Singapore with the help of Malaysian Ho Yueh Keong, was arrested in Kuala Lumpur ten days later, after he was listed on the Interpol wanted list in light of the shooting. Initially charged with murder, Tan was subsequently brought to trial in the High Court on an amended charge of unlawfully discharging a firearm under the Arms Offences Act, which also warrants the mandatory death penalty like murder. Tan did not find a lawyer to represent himself in his defence, and defended himself in the trial, becoming the first man in more than 16 years to conduct his own defence when facing the death penalty in Singapore. Despite putting up a defence that he was drunk and he fired the gun accidentally and did it in self-defence when Lim tried to use a chair to attack him (which is not possible since Lim's hands was also tied up at that time before his death), Tay found him guilty rejected his defence, calling his actions were of “assured and accomplished assassin”, his story of accidental shooting a laughable fantasy, since it required strength to pull the trigger, and sentenced him to death.