Tay Yong Kwang

Tay Yong Kwang is a Singaporean judge of the Supreme Court.

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.

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.

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, and having made reference to Hasik's criminal records, JC 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 judicial commissioner felt that it was not inappropriate to have Hasik jailed for life.

In his words, JC 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.

Peh was said to have raped the girl for 54 times, starting from 1996 to 2000.

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.

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.

He also 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 Chan Seng Onn in a separate trial session.

In April 2000, as Judicial Commissioner, Tay Yong Kwang became the presiding judge of the kidnapping trial of Zhou Jian Guang and Shi Song Jing, the two illegal immigrants from China who were involved in the kidnapping a 14-year-old girl for ransom.

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, High Court judicial commissioner Tay Yong Kwang found Teo guilty of ten charges of criminal breach of trust and sentenced him to 24 years in prison.

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.

In December 2001, Judicial Commissioner (JC) Tay Yong Kwang, who presided the case, found Ler guilty and sentenced him to death for masterminding the murder while sentencing the unnamed boy to indefinite detention for the crime because the boy was underage and cannot be hanged.

JC 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.

On 31 May 2001, a 17-year-old footballer Sulaiman bin Hashim, together with his two friends, were attacked by a 8-member, all Malay Salakau gang at South Bridge Road.

Sulaiman was grievously assaulted by the Salakau gang members while his other two friends managed to flee and call the police.

Sulaiman was killed in the gangfight, with two fatal knife wounds out of the thirteen he suffered being the cause of his death.

Within the next 13 months, six of the gang members involved were arrested and eventually sentenced to jail and caning for culpable homicide, rioting and voluntarily causing grievous hurt, while the remaining two assailants were never caught till today.

After pleading guilty to a reduced charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder (or manslaughter), Hasik was sentenced to life imprisonment and 16 strokes of the cane by Tay, who backdated the sentence to the date of Hasik's arrest on 15 June 2001.

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.

Ler was hanged in December 2002 while the boy went on to spend 17 years in prison at the President's Pleasure before his release in December 2018 by the order of the President of Singapore, who granted clemency for him and remitted the remaining part of his sentence.

One of these gang members, 22-year-old Muhamad Hasik bin Sahar, stood trial before JC Tay Yong Kwang in the High Court on 9 May 2002.

Later, in August 2002, Hasik's appeal for a lighter sentence was rejected by the Court of Appeal.

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.

The couple's appeal against their sentences were dismissed in September 2002.