SINGAPORE: The man who hacked his wife with a chopper outside a Beach Road restaurant in 2022 was sentenced to 19 years in jail and eight strokes of the cane on Tuesday (Jun 3).
Cheng Guoyuan, 49, previously pleaded guilty to a single charge of attempted murder. This carries a maximum punishment of life imprisonment with caning.
Justice Audrey Lim also took into consideration two charges of intimidating bystanders with the chopper when sentencing him.
She agreed with the prosecution that Cheng’s attack on his wife was premeditated and committed out of malice.
She cited the fact that Cheng came up with a plan to kill the victim two days before the attack, took a cleaver from his workplace and drafted WeChat notes to justify the killing.
The WeChat notes, which he meant to be read in the event he died together with his wife, spoke about wanting to “settle the matter” between them and wanting her to “pay the price for betraying” him.
“The line between mere rumination and premeditation is not always clear,” said Justice Lim. But in this case, she found that Cheng’s acts showed premeditation.
She also noted the “extremely vicious and cruel” nature of Cheng’s attack. He repeatedly slashed at his wife’s head with a cleaver and did not stop even after the blade broke off from the handle.
Cheng continued attacking the victim, finding a new cleaver and pursuing her when she got away, even though she was already seriously injured and would not have been able to defend herself, said Justice Lim.
However, she found that it did not fall within the worst type of such cases, and hence did not warrant the maximum sentence.
Cheng, who followed proceedings through a Mandarin interpreter, kept his head bowed as the judge read out her decision.
Videos of the brutal attack on Apr 14, 2022 were circulated widely online. Multiple bystanders had tried to fend Cheng off by throwing things or holding him off with a ladder.
The prosecution argued that the public disquiet caused by Cheng’s violence was amplified because the incident was widely reported in the media and received significant public attention.
Justice Lim said this factor could not be ignored, but should not be given too much weight in assessing the harm caused by Cheng’s offence.
The victim, 44-year-old Han Hongli, suffered severe blood loss and took 1.5 years to recover and adjust to her life-threatening injuries.
These included deep lacerations across her body, open fractures and amputation of her ring finger.
She no longer has sight in her left eye, has a permanently disfigured face and her arms are permanently partially impaired.
Deputy Public Prosecutors Ng Jun Chong and Koh Yi Wen had urged the court to jail Cheng for life and impose eight to 12 strokes of the cane.
Cheng’s lawyers Johannes Hadi and Wei Ziqiang, who were appointed pro bono, had argued for 15 years’ jail and five strokes of the cane.
MOTIVATED BY VENGEANCE
Cheng was likely motivated by vengeance, according to his psychiatric assessment at the Institute of Mental Health.
Cheng and Ms Han, both Chinese nationals, were married in 2009. Ms Han has a daughter from a previous marriage and a son with Cheng.
Ms Han came to Singapore to work in 2016 and would remit money home. The couple’s relationship became strained over time, and Cheng felt Ms Han looked down on him for earning less than her.
Sometime in April 2021, Ms Han discovered that Cheng had done something wrong to her daughter. The wrongdoing was not revealed in court.
When Ms Han confronted Cheng about it, he admitted to the wrongdoing but felt that it would not affect Ms Han’s daughter. He also pleaded with his wife not to report it to the police and promised to compensate the daughter.
Ms Han eventually agreed for Cheng to pay the daughter 40,000 yuan (US$5,552) as compensation, but their relationship worsened. Cheng managed to borrow the money but subsequently fell into financial difficulty.
By then, Ms Han had stopped remitting money to Cheng, in part because she was not able to work due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cheng “believed that his reputation and his family’s reputation were more important than his life, and would rather die than ‘losing (his) face'”, prosecutors said.
He sought assurance from Ms Han that she would not tell his relatives and friends about his wrongdoing, and kept asking her to let the matter rest. He also asked her not to divorce him.
In September 2021, Cheng came to Singapore to work as a cleaner. Ms Han did not know he was in Singapore, and was shocked when he turned up at her workplace in November that year.
Later that month, Cheng threatened to kill Ms Han and not let her live in peace if she did not reconcile with him.
Ms Han reported these threats on Nov 28, 2021, and police investigated Cheng and warned him not to look for her.
Cheng returned to China in January 2022. In April that year, he found work at a restaurant and returned to Singapore, again without informing his wife.
