Murder of Seow Kim Choo

Daryati (born 14 August 1992[13] or 1994[14]) was born and raised in Lampung, Sumatra, Indonesia. She had at least two siblings in her family, an older brother and a younger sister. Although her official date of birth was 14 August 1992,[15] Daryati claimed during her murder trial that she was actually two years younger than her official age, meaning that her true date of birth was likely 14 August 1994.[16]

When she was 14 or 15 years old, Daryati was raped by her older brother, who did the act ten times for over a year. However, she was threatened by her brother to keep silent over the rapes, and her brother even vent violence on her to keep her painful experiences secret.[17] Daryati, who was homosexual, had two relationships with two other females. One of them was a employee of the prawn factory where Daryati used to work at, while the second was her current girlfriend "Indah", who was also an Indonesian who later worked as a maid in Hong Kong in 2016, the same year when Daryati committed murder while working as a maid in Singapore.[18]

As she grew older, Daryati, who studied up to high school, first worked at a prawn factory at her village. After this, she went to a maid training centre, where she was taught and trained to work as a domestic maid. It was the same place where she met her lover Indah, who similarly went through the training programme, and they both got romantically involved. Due to her pressing needs to pay for her sister's schooling fees and her father's treatment, Daryati had no choice but to decide working as a maid in another country.

Later, upon the completion of her training programme, Daryati was hired by a Singaporean family, none other than the family of Seow Kim Choo, to work as their maid, and she first came to Singapore in April 2016. Reportedly, Daryati was given proper care and treatment by the family while working for the Ongs, who also had another maid named Don Hayati working for their household. She earned S$580 a month, including S$80 as compensation for working on her days off. Daryati's duties were mostly cooking, cleaning, walking the family dogs and doing laundry for the family and she shared these chores with Don Hayati.[19][20]

Despite being treated well at work, Daryati felt extremely homesick and lonely, as she missed her family from Indonesia, and also missed her girlfriend who was at Hong Kong. She was not allowed to have a handphone and cannot contact her family or girlfriend, and cannot get her monthly salary until she worked at least eight months under the Ongs. Daryati herself was not close to the other maid Don Hayati despite befriending her, as she was hired by the wife of one of the couple's sons, and assigned to other work. Daryati was only allowed to go out whenever she helped the family to walk their pet dogs. Her passport was also taken from her and locked inside the family's safe.[7]

Since May 2016, only a month into her employment at the Ongs, Daryati formulated a plan to retrieve her passport in order to return to Indonesia, by force if necessary, and she also intended to rob the family of their money (also kept in a safe locker), which she intended to use for starting a business in Indonesia. Daryati told Don Hayati about her plan and roped her in to help themselves to retrieve their passports and steal the money. To her own self, Daryati was also secretly prepared to resort to killing her employers if the situation plunged into the worst case scenario, as written in her diary entry dated 12 May 2016 (though Daryati claimed it meant she would risk death to execute her plan):

I must carry out this plan quickly. I have to be brave even though life is at stake. I am ready to face all risks, whatever the risk, I must be ready to accept it. I hope that this plan succeed and run smoothly. My employer's family is my target. DEATH!!! (translated from Bahasa Indonesia to English)[21]

In another diary entry dated 2 June 2016, Daryati drew a map to illustrate the layout of the house, to facilitate her plan to take the money and passport before escaping.[7]

On 7 June 2016, the second month into her employment at the Ongs' household, Daryati decided to carry out her plan. She selected this date due to it being the day when Seow's brother would arrive at the house to visit his sister, and would bring a huge sum of money to give to Seow as he usually did during his regular visits. Without discussing it with Don Hayati, Daryati armed herself with a hammer and three knives (one of them sharpened) - a kukri, a long knife and a small knife, and hid them at various locations of the house. The knives were intended for use to attack her employer Seow Kim Choo and the hammer was intended to assault Seow's daughter-in-law if she appeared during the attack. After Seow's brother and children left the house at around 8pm during night time, Daryati decided it was the right time to strike. She first asked Don Hayati to distract Ong and bring him downstairs, and also to act as lookout for her while she go upstairs to threaten Seow.

After retrieving her knives from their respective hiding places, Daryati brought Seow into the room, under the pretext of passing her the clothes she ironed. Underneath the clothes, Daryati brandished the long knife she hid and used it to threaten Seow, demanding her to return her her passport. When Seow began to shout and struggle, Daryati dragged her into the bathroom and locked the door, and she proceeded to stab and slash Seow multiple times, including on the neck. A total of 94 wounds were inflicted upon 59-year-old Seow Kim Choo, who died from the relentless stabbing. Subsequently, Daryati also attacked Ong upon seeing him appearing at the bathroom before she was finally restrained and later arrested.[7][22]

After her arrest, Daryati was charged with first-degree murder.[23] As the charge of murder Daryati faced was one of murder with intention to kill under Section 300(a) of the Penal Code (also the most serious form of murder), if she was found guilty, the punishment for this offence was the mandatory death penalty. After the completion of police investigations, Daryati was remanded at Changi Women's Prison (Singapore's prison for female criminals) for a two-week period of pre-trial psychiatric evaluation, to assess her mental state at the time of the offences.[24] Daryati additionally faced a second charge of attempted murder for the knife attack on Ong Thiam Soon, but the charge was later stood down during her trial proceedings for murder. Daryati's accomplice, Don Hayati, who was not aware of and uninvolved in the murder despite her participation, was not arrested or charged.[20] Daryati became at least the sixth maid to be charged with murder in Singapore in the last three years, where Singapore witnessed certain high-profile cases of maids killing their employer or the employer's family member, including Dewi Sukowati who was jailed 18 years for the killing of Nancy Gan Wan Geok (ex-wife of Hilton Cheong-Leen).[25][26][27][28]

A psychiatric report by Dr Jaydip Sarkar concluded that Daryati was suffering from an adjustment disorder at the time of the offence, but she was mentally fit to plead and stand trial, as her disorder was not severe enough to cause a substantial impairment of Daryati's mental state.[7]

After a three-year remand behind bars, Daryati's trial began at the High Court on 23 April 2019. The presiding judge of the case was High Court judge Valerie Thean (daughter of retired judge L P Thean or Thean Lip Ping), and the prosecutors in charge of Daryati's case were Deputy Public Prosecutors (DPPs) Wong Kok Weng, Phoebe Tan and Lim Shin Hui.[20] Daryati was represented by veteran lawyer Mohamed Muzammil Mohamed, who was engaged by the Indonesian embassy to represent Daryati.[29] Daryati was not the first Indonesian maid to be represented by Mohamed during a murder trial; Mohamed had once taken the 2002 defence case of Sundarti Supriyanto, an Indonesian maid who was sentenced to life imprisonment for the double manslaughters of her abusive employer and the employer's daughter.[30][31]

The prosecution based their case on Daryati's police statements, in which she confessed to her premeditation and her involvement in the crime, and the events of that night. They also referred to Daryati's diary entry dated 12 May, in which she wrote that she was prepared to even kill Seow Kim Choo in the course of taking her passport back, to describe that Daryati had clearly intended to cause the death of Seow in furtherance of her plan, and he pointed out that these chilling words amounted to an ex-ante (meaning "before the event" in Latin) confession of the "brutal and cold-blooded" murder she had planned and executed on that fateful night of 7 June 2016.[32] However, in the next phase of trial on 13 August 2019 (the date before Daryati's 25th or 27th birthday), Daryati's lawyer Mohamed sought to dismiss seven of Daryati's nine police statements as inadmissible sources of evidence due to these statements being made involuntarily.

Mohamed argued that during her questioning by the police at the hospital, Daryati was not fit to give to the police her account of what happened due to the giddiness, nausea and pain from injuries to her hand, and that she was under a state of "oppression" when she was interrogated by the police officers, which caused her to make most of the statements against her will. The presence of a male photographer taking photos of her breast and injuries also caused distress to Daryati, adding to her emotional woes and tendency to make statements that cannot be admitted.[15]

When both Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Mahathir Mohamad and Superintendent (Supt) Burhanudeen Haji Hussainar took the stand, both of them testified that the statements were made voluntarily by Daryati. ASP Mahathir testified that during their questioning, Daryati sobbed at times, but he checked with her that she was all right. Supt Burhanudeen, who was also present, told the court that she was alert and able to articulate her responses and pause for thought. He added that Daryati did not object to having a male photographer taking photos of her injuries, and he added during Mohamed's cross-examination that he would not have forced Daryati to make statements against her will if she was truly feeling unwell. Dr Cuthbert Teo Eng Swee, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Seow's corpse and tasked by the police to examine Daryati's injuries, also said Daryati did not object to allowing a male photographer to document her injuries on camera. The statements were eventually ruled admissible as evidence.[33]

On 6 April 2020, after 17 days of trial from 23 April 2019 to 4 March 2020, the prosecution, after reviewing the case and representations by the defence, decided to reduce the charge of first-degree murder to one of third-degree murder under Section 300(c) of the Penal Code. For this charge of murder, which dictates an offence of murder with no intention of kill but intentionally causes a bodily injury that resulted in death, the punishment is either life imprisonment or death penalty. The prosecution also submitted to the court that they would not press for the death penalty and leave the sentence to the court's discretion. After Daryati pleaded guilty to the charge, it was finalized and she was accordingly convicted of the reduced murder charge.[34]

With the prosecution no longer pursuing the death sentence, the only other possible sentence available for Daryati in accordance to her finalized charge was life imprisonment, the minimum penalty for murder with no intention to kill. However, the sentencing trial was adjourned to allow Daryati's lawyers to prepare a mitigation plea before the courts.[35] It happened so that at the time of Daryati's conviction, Singapore was experiencing the infectious COVID-19 pandemic that happens globally in most countries, which partly caused a delay to all court proceedings in Singapore.

On 21 September 2020, the date when Daryati was scheduled to submit her mitigation plea before sentencing, Daryati's lawyer Mohamed Muzammil Mohamed submitted to the trial court that Daryati wished to withdraw her plea of guilt for the reduced murder charge, as she wanted to put up a defence of diminished responsibility to seek a further reduction of her charge to one of culpable homicide not amounting to murder (or manslaughter), in the hope of avoiding life imprisonment. Under the laws of Singapore, culpable homicide carries a penalty of either life or up to twenty years' jail. The trial proceedings resumed in October 2020 after Daryati's conviction was overturned through the withdrawal of her guilty plea.[36][37]

Daryati testified during the second trial that she suffered from persistent depressive disorder. She revealed to the court her traumatic experiences of being raped and abused by her brother, and stated that she suffered from nightmares as a result of the continual sexual assaults since her teenage years. She also stated that she had been experiencing depressive episodes since the start of the rapes, and these episodes were also stemmed by her shame of being a rape victim and a homosexual, even when she came to Singapore. She also stated that she was in a state of anger that the time of the stabbing, and thus she lost control and could not control her hands from stabbing.[38][39] The defence's psychiatrist, Dr Tommy Tan, also supported her defence of diminished responsibility by submitting a medical report, in which he diagnosed Daryati with persistent depressive disorder, based on her alleged symptoms since her adolescence and the interviews with Daryati's mother, sister and Don Hayati. Dr Tan, who took the stand in February 2021, stated that Daryati also experienced homesickness and suicidal thoughts, as well as her difficulty to sleep and loss of appetite etc., which were signs leaning to the conclusion that Daryati was suffering from diminished responsibility.[40]

However, the prosecution described the killing as "relentless" and "cruel", stating that Daryati lied about having nightmares and contended Daryati had control over her actions and was not suffering from any mental condition that amounted to an impairment of her mental state at the time of the offence, and stated that she clearly premeditated the plan by preparing knives to confront Seow over her passport, showing her ability to plan and reason. They also argued that Daryati was not truthful in her account to Dr Tan as she did not told the prosecution's psychiatrist Dr Jaydip Sarkar about the nightmares.[16] Dr Sarkar also took the stand in February 2021 to tell the court that although Daryati felt sad, anxious, frustrated and homesick shortly after arriving in Singapore, she did not suffer from an abnormality of the mind. Dr Sarkar also stated that based on his interviews with Daryati's friends, family and Seow Kim Choo's family, Daryati did not have problems with her daily functioning since she had completed high school, find work and make friends back in Indonesia, as well as eating normally; had not lost much weight; and was able to make friends.[40]

On 23 April 2021, exactly two years after Daryati first stood trial, the trial judge, Justice Valerie Thean, rejected Daryati's diminished responsibility defence and thus found Daryati guilty of murder a second time.[41]

Explaining why she did not accept the defence of diminished responsibility, Justice Thean stated that the psychiatric report by Dr Tommy Tan was mostly based on Daryati's self-reported symptoms and there were no independent facts to corroborate them. The actions of Daryati before, during and after the murder did not show that she was suffering from any abnormality of the mind. As such, compared to the more reliable and credible psychiatric evidence of the prosecution, the defence's psychiatric evidence did not stand up to scrutiny and thus the trial judge determined that Daryati did not suffer from persistent depressive disorder. Given that Daryati had intentionally caused the 94 knife injuries on 59-year-old Seow Kim Choo, such that some of these wounds were in the ordinary course of nature could cause death, Justice Thean was satisfied that the essential elements of the third-degree murder charge against Daryati were made out and thus convicted her as charged.[42][43]

After convicting Daryati of murder, Justice Thean sentenced Daryati to life imprisonment, and backdated the sentence to the date of Daryati's first remand (which was on 9 June 2016). The judge noted that the prosecution did not seek the death penalty, and she also stated that based on her observations and reference to the precedent case of Chan Lie Sian (a brothel owner who got a life sentence for murder), the circumstances of Daryati's case were not sufficiently abhorrent and callous to call for the imposition of the maximum punishment of death, which was only reserved for the exceptional cases of murder that sparked an outrage of the community's feelings and demonstrated an offender's viciousness and/or a blatant disregard for human life, as first coined by the 2015 landmark case of Kho Jabing.[40]

Among the factors that made Justice Thean deciding to not sentence Daryati to death, the judge took into consideration Daryati's young age of 21 or 23 at the time of the murder, her lack of exposure to the outside world other than the protective environments of her village and previous workplaces in Indonesia, and her emotional and psychological trauma of sexual assaults and violence perpetrated by her brother. The trial judge also accepted that Daryati formulated the murder plot due to her desperation to return home and homesickness, and that she reluctantly made the difficult decision to come to Singapore out of filial duty for her ailing parents and the family's needs to resolve their financial poverty.[44] These above circumstances mitigate the gruesome nature of the crime to the extent that there were sufficient grounds to persuade Justice Thean to spare Daryati from the gallows due to her low behavioural exhibition of viciousness and disregard for human life. In her own words, Justice Thean quoted as she passed the life sentence on Daryati:

The specific nature of the incident did not reflect a cold and calculated killing, but rather, intense panic and distress in executing her plan to return home. I therefore exercised my discretion to impose a term of life imprisonment.[45]

After Daryati's sentencing, Daryati filed an appeal against her murder conviction.[46] The prosecution, who did not appeal, subsequently withdrawn the charge of attempted murder against Daryati for the grievous attack on Ong Thiam Soon, who was 62 years old at the time Daryati was sentenced by the High Court.[47] Although the minimum sentence of life imprisonment for murder was accompanied with mandatory caning under Singapore law, Daryati was spared the cane since she was female.[48]