Reformed upskirter admitted to the Bar, along with duo who plagiarised while in university

SINGAPORE: A reformed upskirter and two people who committed plagiarism during their university days have been admitted to the Bar, with the Chief Justice finding that they were fit for admission as advocates and solicitors of the Supreme Court.

Mr Chester Lee Jun Ming was jailed for a month in 2018 for taking upskirt videos of a woman on public transport.

Mr Chong Weng Teng had "self-plagiarised" during his final semester in the National University of Singapore (NUS), by reusing portions of another research paper he had submitted for another module.

Ms Lin Shuang Ju had written an article for Lexicon, a Singapore Management University (SMU) student legal publication club, in which she plagiarised another author's work.

In a judgment released on Monday (Oct 9), Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon said the central inquiry in admission applications was whether the applicant was suitable for admission in terms of character.

After reviewing each of their cases, he allowed their admission after finding that Mr Lee had since demonstrated that he had reformed his character, and that the circumstances in Mr Chong and Ms Lin's cases did not suggest dishonesty or any other defect of their character.

For all three applications, the Attorney-General, the Law Society of Singapore and the Singapore Institute of Legal Education found that the applicants were "fit and proper" for admission in terms of their character.

MR LEE'S CASE

Mr Lee recorded two upskirt videos of a woman while on public transport in May 2017. He pleaded guilty to insulting a woman's modesty in January 2018, with a second similar charge taken into consideration, and was sentenced to one month's jail.

The Chief Justice noted that while the offence had taken place six years earlier, its severity cannot be understated.

Sexual offences "inevitably and invariably entail a severe violation of the dignity and bodily integrity of the victim, often causing deep-seated trauma", and someone capable of committing such an offence "will almost invariably be found to be unfit for admission as an advocate and solicitor in terms of his character", said Chief Justice Menon.

However, he found that Mr Lee had "sufficiently reformed his character" in the six years since, and is "no longer the same person that he was when he committed the offence".

He noted, among other things, that Mr Lee complied with instructions of MRT staff when apprehended, admitted to the police about what he had done and promptly informed his employer of the charge, expressing remorse.

After being released from prison, Mr Lee maintained a clean criminal and academic record, said the Chief Justice.

He maintained a full-time job, enrolled in and graduated from law school, passed the Bar examinations and completed a practice training contract.

Mr Lee also obtained character references from two people, including his immediate supervisor and a former lawyer practising in Malaysia, who said he had learnt from his mistakes and reformed his character.

Chief Justice Menon also noted how Mr Lee made full disclosure of his offence in his application for admission, not seeking to downplay his culpability in any way.

Instead, he recognised that what he had done was "wrong, despicable and disrespectful to women", an attitude that persuaded the Chief Justice that there had been "considerable reformation of his character".

He also noted that "virtually all forms of criminal punishment are ultimately intended to, and do, have some rehabilitative effect on the offender".

"Criminal punishment can provide the impetus for an offender to understand why what they have done was wrong and to reform themselves to avoid doing the same again," he said.

"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."

For all these reasons, Chief Justice Menon found that Mr Lee had reformed his character since his offence, and was a fit and proper person for admission to the Bar.

THE PLAGIARISM CASES

The second applicant, Mr Chong, had plagiarised his own work while enrolled in the China and International Economic Law module during his final semester with NUS' Faculty of Law.

In submitting a research paper, he reused portions of another research paper he had previously submitted for another module.

Such conduct was prohibited by NUS' plagiarism policy and NUS Law's ethical conduct guidelines.

The school conducted a plagiarism inquiry and Mr Chong admitted to what he had done, apologised and said he would accept any penalty.

He was given zero marks for the paper as a penalty and failed the module, retaking it in order to graduate in 2022.

Chief Justice Menon said this "academic offence" came not from a lack of academic integrity but his failure to check plagiarism guidelines and "his ignorant assumption that plagiarism only involved copying someone else's work".

It was found that he was not dishonest when he self-plagiarised, but was genuinely unaware that what he did was against NUS' rules.

"In this case, Mr Chong's carelessness did not suggest a flaw in his character," said Chief Justice Menon.

He said it was important that Mr Chong immediately took ownership of his mistake by admitting to it, apologising for it and accepting the punishment without reservation. He also gave full disclosure of his offence in his application for admission to the Bar even though there was no public record.

The third applicant, Ms Lin, had plagiarised another author's work while writing an article on pet trusts for SMU's Lexicon as requested by a senior lecturer.

The article was published in the Singapore Law Journal in early July this year, but a complaint of plagiarism was received shortly after.

She allegedly plagiarised an article by Mr Andrew B F Carnabuci. Ms Lin had cited Mr Carnabuci's article twice in the footnotes of her article.

Ms Lin gave her account of events to SMU at a meeting on Jul 26 this year. SMU's internal investigations found some evidence of plagiarism in the sense that there was some use of others' work without appropriate attribution.

However, SMU also found that this could be remedied by increased attribution and appropriate editing. Ms Lin wrote a letter of apology to Mr Carnabuci, acknowledging what happened, and he accepted her apology.

The Chief Justice agreed that Ms Lin's plagiarism did not appear to have involved dishonesty. He considered her prompt apology, which was accepted by Mr Carnabuci.

The problem with Ms Lin's article was that she had paraphrased various ideas from other articles, cited those articles and synthesised those ideas into an essay about the topic, said the Chief Justice.

"While this may have been acceptable for a university assignment, it was not acceptable for an academic article. In that regard, Ms Lin completely misunderstood what was required in an academic publication," he said.

It was Ms Lin's first time publishing an academic article, and it was eventually retracted as it was not of publishable quality.

As there was no dishonesty in the matter, Chief Justice Menon granted her admission to the Bar.