These three appeals from the Court of Criminal Appeal of Singapore, which were heard together because they raised a single and identical point of law, arise out of two separate trials for different capital offences that were tried before two Judges of the High Court under the section that bears the number 193 in the 1980 reprint of the Criminal Procedure Code. Throughout these reasons for their decision dismissing the appeals, which was given orally on 30 April 1981, their Lordships will refer to the relevant sections of the Criminal Procedure Code as they are numbered in the current reprint.

Haw Tua Tau was charged with the murder of two persons. He was convicted of both offences by the unanimous decision of the two High Court Judges (Chua and Rajah JJ). He appealed against his conviction to the Court of Criminal Appeal, and his appeal was dismissed on 7 September 1979. Low Hong Eng and Tan Ah Tee were charged jointly with trafficking in 459.3 grams of diamorphine - a quantity that attracts a mandatory death penalty under the Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Act 1975. They were convicted of that offence by the unanimous decision of Choor Singh J and Rajah J, and their appeals against their convictions were dismissed by the Court of Criminal Appeal on 10 October 1979.

It is unnecessary for their Lordships to say anything about the various grounds relied on by any of the appellants in the Court of Criminal Appeal. They were plainly without merit and none of them was pursued before - this board. Nor is it necessary to say anything more about the evidence at either of the trials that led to the convictions of the appellants, except that in each of them, at the conclusion of the prosecution's case, the presiding Judge addressed to the accused what since the passing of the Criminal Procedure Code (Amendment) Act 1976 (Act No. 10 of 1976), has become the standard allocution, and formally called upon them to give evidence; each of the accused, after consulting Counsel, did in fact give evidence in his or her defence.

The standard allocution, which their Lordships will set out later in these reasons, follows closely the terms of ss. 188(2) and 195(1), (2) and (3) of the Criminal Procedure Code which were inserted in the Code by Act No. 10 of 1976 and abolished the previously existing right of the accused to make an unsworn statement without subjecting himself to cross-examination. The only question argued before this Board was the contention, common to all the three appellants, that the amendments made to the Criminal Procedure Code by Act No. 10 of 1975 were inconsistent with Art. 9(1) of the Constitution of Singapore that "No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty save in accordance with law" and, being inconsistent, were rendered void by Art. 4.

The whole foundation of the argument on which this contention was based was the interpretation that this board had placed on the expression "law" in the context of Art. 9(1) in the case of Ong Ah Chuan v. PP [1981] 1 MLJ 64; [1980] 3 WLR 855. The board's judgment in that case was delivered on 15 October 1980, more than a year after the judgments of the Court of Criminal Appeal of Singapore in the instant appeals; so the point about the unconstitutionality of the amending Act No. 10 of 1976 for inconsistency with Art. 9(1) of the Constitution, in the form that it was presented to their Lordships in the instant appeals, was not available to be taken by the appellants in the Court of Criminal Appeal.

It was this exceptional circumstance, coupled with the fact that these are capital cases, that induced this board to give special leave to appeal in order to raise the question of the inconsistency of Act No. 10 of 1976 with Art. 9(1) of the Constitution of Singapore, notwithstanding that the point was not taken in the Courts in Singapore. In doing so their Lordships had no intention of departing from the policy declared in Ong Ah Chuan v. PP (at p. 859) that if at