Court orders lawyer M. Ravi to pay $5k in costs for improper conduct

Lawyer M. Ravi was ordered to pay costs of $5,000 to the prosecution after the Court of Appeal found that he had acted improperly in making an "unmeritorious" bid to reopen a drug trafficking case.

In a judgment yesterday, the court said he brought an application without any real basis, misrepresented certain facts, and made baseless allegations against his client's former lawyer without giving him a chance to respond.

"Such haphazard and irresponsible attempts at reopening concluded appeals will be looked upon with disfavour," said the judgment delivered by Justice Andrew Phang.

The court, which also comprised Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and Justice Judith Prakash, even went as far as to characterise Mr Ravi's conduct as "grandstanding".

Lawyers should give accurate and measured advice to clients and not simply encourage last-ditch attempts to reopen concluded matters without a reasonable basis, said the court.

"Accused persons who have been sentenced, in particular to the death penalty, should be protected from having their hopes unnecessarily raised and then dashed because of inaccurate or incompetent legal advice," it added.

Mr Ravi had acted pro bono for Syed Suhail Syed Zin, 44, who was sentenced to death in December 2015 for trafficking in 38.84g of heroin.

Suhail's appeal was dismissed in October 2018 and his petition for clemency was rejected in July 2019. On Sept 17 last year, Mr Ravi applied for permission to reopen the case on two grounds.

First, he contended that the issue of whether Suhail suffered from an abnormality of mind had not been sufficiently canvassed. Under the law, a drug courier with an abnormality of mind qualifies for a life sentence.

But the court said none of the medical evidence in the case supported the claim.

Second, Mr Ravi contended that Suhail's former lawyer did not explore evidence in relation to an alleged sum of $20,000 that the convicted man received from his uncle. But the court said the history of the proceedings showed that his former lawyer had in fact pursued this point.

After the application was dismissed in October last year, the prosecution sought a personal costs order against Mr Ravi, who argued that no such order should be made.

Suhail also wrote to the court to "waive" the costs, as Mr Ravi had provided services to him without seeking any payment.

The court said there was no reason why a lawyer who represented a client pro bono should be held to any lower standard than a lawyer representing a paying client.