The development of legal procedures in Malaya and Singapore followed different paths. Trial by jury for serious criminal cases was part of the judicial system practised in the Straits Settlements from 1900. However, in the Malay states, due to the lack of enough people proficient in the English language (the language of the courts under the British colonial rule), it was found impracticable to empanel sufficient number of peers to try a person.

A system called the assessors was introduced in the Malay States in 1900 for capital cases, i.e. where the possible maximum sentence was death. Under this, three assessors are chosen from ordinary people known to be conversant in English and from these, the presiding judge in the court would then choose two, including o­ne who spoke the same language as the accused.

This system worked well for many years until the case in 1952 of Lee Meng, charged with an offence punishable by death under the Emergency Regulations then in force. She had been a teacher in a Chinese school in Teluk Anson (now Teluk Intan) and was alleged to have been a member of the Perak committee of the Malayan Communist Party.

At the Assize Court, Ipoh in mid-1952, with Justice James Thomson (later to become Malaysia's first Lord President) presiding, Lee Meng @ Lee Tian Tai, 24, was charged with:

-Possession of a pistol at Gunong Rapat between July 1948 and October 1951;
-Possession of a hand grenade; and
-Consorting with armed bandits.

MG Neal, DPP, prosecuted and SP Seenivasagam (of People's Progressive Party fame later) defended. Lee pleaded not guilty.

Photographic 'evidence'

The slim pretty girl was not caught nor captured but arrested from information supplied by surrendered terrorists. Nothing incriminating was ever found in a search at her Lahat Road home. However, a photograph was produced in court allegedly showing Lee in uniform and wearing a cap and having a hand grenade strapped to the waist. Lee claimed the picture was not of her and denied she had ever had a grenade nor lived in the jungle nor had any photograph taken. The prosecution paraded six ex-bandits who identified her as a former comrade.

The two assessors, o­ne a Chinese and the other an Indian, found her not guilty. Justice Thomson summarised, "Both assessors are of the opinion that you are not guilty. How, as reasonable men, they could come to that opinion, I have no means of knowing. I disagree with their opinion and order a retrial."

At the retrial under Justice Pretheroe, two Europeans and o­ne Chinese assessors were presented to the court. The Chinese and o­ne European were accepted as assessors. The trial was rehashed and the Chinese assessor found her not guilty whereas the European assessor found her guilty. Justice Pretheroe said, "One assessor found you guilty and the other not. I agree with the assessor who is of the opinion that you are guilty and convict you. You are hereby sentenced to death."

The case was reported and the subsequent public reaction caused many a red face and unkind but, in my opinion, thoroughly deserved remarks about British justice not just in Malaya, but in the UK where the case was appealed all the way to the Privy Council. Sir Dingle Foot, QC led the final appeal, assisted by a Mrs Wee Phaik Gan (whom we later knew as the famous PG Lim) and all worked o­n a pro bono basis, such was the feeling of outrage against the apparent injustice, after a full Court of Appeal voted 2-1 to uphold the conviction.

Summarising the case to the Privy Council, Foot said that the case "might well be fair but was not seen to be fair, given that no Asian, sitting in judgement had found her guilty". The appeal, however, was not successful.

Petition after petition

The case opened up much discussion o­n the inadequacy and seeming inequity and unfairness of the assessor system. Whereas o­nly European assessors might be used for any capital case involving a European accused, European assessors could also sit in judgment of an Asian.

In fact, at the second trial, the judicial service had manipulated the selection of a European assessor by presenting o­ne Chinese and two European candidates.

Seenivasagam, in a discussion after the failure of the Privy Council appeal, attacked the pernicious nature of the assessor system where the accused was tried and retried until the "desired verdict" was reached. "I have yet to see a single case of a judge disagreeing with an assessor's guilty verdict." He pointed out that taking the two trials, all three Asians have found Lee not guilty but all three Europeans have found her guilty

At that time, any capital punishment carried out in a Malay State had to have the final assent of the ruler and so, the poor Sultan of Perak was besieged with petition after petition to commute the sentence. They came from no lesser a person than Sir Tan Cheng Lock, president of the Malayan Chinese Association, British members of Parliament and even someone named Ossar Tay, 50, who offered his own life to save Lee.

All these appeals were overshadowed by a totally separate event. The Hungarian government, then under communist control, offered to have an exchange of prisoners; that of Lee with Briton Edgar Sanders (brother of the actor, George) who had been languishing for 13 years in a Budapest jail for alleged spying. Suddenly, the whole Lee Meng case took o­n a different colour and British and Malayan interests were kept simmering. The British government rejected the offer when Sir Winston Churchill firmly said "No barter" o­n March 7, 1953.

System abolished

Two days later, the Sultan of Perak, o­n the advice of the Executive Committee of the Perak State Council, commuted Lee's sentence to penal servitude for life. After that, public interest waned but it did not prevent the High Commissioner, Sir Gerald Templer, from commissioning a re-examination of the assessor system by a 10-men committee under Chief Justice Matthew o­n April 24, 1953.

This committee later reported painfully that at that point in time, there was still a shortage of enough citizens proficient in the English language to implement the jury system in the Malay states; so the assessor system would have to go o­n. However, the racial-discriminatory rule about Europeans being tried by European assessors was abolished. In addition, judges disagreeing with the assessors must state their grounds, which could be challenged and subject to further judicial review.

In 1954, there was a move to abolish the assessor system and to introduce the jury system initiated by Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj, Tan Cheng Lock and SM Yong in the federal legislative but this was not unexpectedly defeated by the colonial government. After independence in 1957, the Alliance government introduced trial by jury for all capital cases.

However, trial by jury was abolished over a decade ago.

Footnote to the Lee Meng case

In 1964, Lee was deported to China and never heard of again. According to Seenivasagam, "Before she left, she asked for a sewing machine, two bicycles, some clothing and other goods. She promised us she would write and we know her enough to be sure she has written, but we have never received any letters."

YAP YOK FOO (or Uncle Yap, as he is more popularly known o­n the Internet) is a retired Chartered Accountant whose passions include cryptic crosswords (see his puzzles every week in the New Sunday Times) and Malaysian history, for which research, he spends mornings at the National Archives, reading old newspapers. He can be reached at yfyap@pop.jaring.my.