Unlawful assembly – Section 141 of the Penal Code Singapore

Section 141 of the Penal Code (Cap. 224, 2008 Rev Ed): Unlawful assembly

An assembly of 5 or more persons is an unlawful assembly if the common object of the persons is to:

• Overawe the government or any public servant by means of criminal force
• To resist the execution of any law or legal process
• To commit any offence
• To deprive any person of any right by means of criminal force
• To compel any individual to do what he is not legally bound to do, or to not do what he is legally entitled to do

Under section 143 of the Penal Code, the punishment for being a member of an unlawful assembly is imprisonment of up to 2 years or a fine or both.

 

Joining an unlawful assembly armed with a deadly weapon

Under section 144, a member of an unlawful assembly can face up to 5 years’ imprisonment, or a fine, or caning, or any combination of the aforesaid punishments, if he is armed with a deadly weapon. A deadly weapon is defined by this section to be any object, including a sharpened wooden pole, which is likely to cause death if used as a weapon.

 

Use of violence by members of an unlawful assembly

If force or violence is used by at least one member of the unlawful assembly in pursuit of that assembly’s common object, every member of that unlawful assembly is guilty of the offence of rioting. Under section 147 of the Penal Code, the offence of rioting carries a mandatory imprisonment term of up to 7 years and caning.

 

Rioting with a deadly weapon

Using the same definition of a deadly weapon above, any person guilty of rioting with a deadly weapon will be charged under section 148 of the Penal Code and face an imprisonment term of up to 10 years and caning.

 

Offence committed in prosecution of common object

Under section 149 of the Penal Code, if an offence is committed by any member of an unlawful assembly in prosecution of the common object of that assembly, every person who is a member of the same assembly is guilty of that offence.

 

Based on the Court of Appeal and High Court’s past judgements, the following with regards to the concept of an unlawful assembly’s common object can be said in summary of these decisions:

 

• A common object has to be more than similar, individualistic desires which happen to have the same goals. It has to be shared between parties in an unlawful assembly.
• For parties to share a common, unlawful object, they do not have to be known to each other.
• The common object of an unlawful assembly can change on the ground as the incident is unfolding. For example, a few members of an unlawful assembly pulling out knives to stab their victims, whom they initially had only hit by kicking or punching, would change the common object of the unlawful assembly from one of rioting to (minimally) one of rioting, armed with a deadly weapon.
• Mere passive presence in an unlawful assembly might or might not constitute membership in that assembly. Depending on the facts of a case, the court could draw the inference even from a person’s mere presence that he shared the common object of the assembly. However, if an accused person had taken reasonable steps to dissociate himself from the group, the presence of common object shared by him and the rest of that unlawful assembly can be disputed.

 

For more information, please contact our criminal lawyer, Ray Louis, at 9090 8288.