Man who kept clean record for 5 years after jail time admitted to the Bar
After serving a one-month prison term for taking upskirt videos of a woman, a man kept a clean record for the next five years as he worked towards getting a law degree and passing the Bar examinations.
Mr Chester Lee, 34, was admitted to the Bar on Sept 22, 2023, after Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon concluded that he was suitable for admission as he has reformed his character since committing the crime six years ago.
Mr Lee was 28 when he recorded two upskirt videos of a woman in May 2017 while they were on public transport.
In January 2018, he was handed one month’s jail after he pleaded guilty to one charge of insulting the modesty of a woman, with a second charge taken into consideration during sentencing.
After he was released from prison, he maintained a full-time job, enrolled in and graduated from law school, passed the Bar examinations and completed his practice training stint.
In his application for admission to the Bar, Mr Lee made full disclosure of his past offence, and said what he had done was “wrong, despicable, disrespectful to women”.
The Attorney-General, the Law Society of Singapore and the Singapore Institute of Legal Education, which are the three stakeholders involved in the admission of lawyers, did not object to his application.
In written grounds of decision issued on Monday, the Chief Justice said the severity of the offence could not be understated, but he was satisfied that Mr Lee had sufficiently reformed his character in the intervening period. He added that Mr Lee was no longer the same person that he was when he committed the offence.
Chief Justice Menon noted that in the six years since the offence, Mr Lee had kept a clean record.
He said: “An individual who has taken active steps to improve himself and his professional prospects is likely to also have taken steps to resolve his character issues.”
Chief Justice Menon said criminal punishment can provide the impetus for an offender to understand why what they have done was wrong and reform themselves to avoid doing the same again.
“Where an applicant has faced criminal punishment and maintained a clean record over a long period thereafter, it seems reasonable to conclude that the criminal punishment has been effective to some extent in contributing to the reformation of his or her character,” he said.
Apart from Mr Lee, two others, who had committed academic offences, were also found by Chief Justice Menon to be fit and proper for admission to the Bar.
Mr Chong Weng Teng had “self-plagiarised” in a research paper for a module in his final semester at the National University of Singapore by reusing portions of another paper he previously submitted for another module.
He was given zero marks for the paper for flouting plagiarism guidelines and had to take an additional module before he graduated in August 2022.
Ms Lin Shuang Ju had authored an article for a law journal run by Singapore Management University students.
Another author accused her of plagiarising his work, which was cited twice in the footnotes of her article. After investigations, SMU concluded that Ms Lin had used work done by others without appropriate attribution.
Chief Justice Menon said Mr Chong’s plagiarism reflected a lack of academic diligence rather than a lack of academic integrity, while Ms Lin had misunderstood the rules of attribution in academic publications.
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