Pro Bono Stories: Advocating for Accused Person With Intellectual Disability
The Criminal Legal Aid Scheme (CLAS) was launched in 1985. A ground-up movement by senior lawyers, including the late Mr Harry Elias SC, CLAS has played and will continue to play a critical role in providing criminal legal aid for vulnerable persons.
CLAS Fellows are junior lawyers who work with our charity full time as pro bono defence counsel on short term contracts sponsored by our generous supporters. After their term, many of our CLAS Fellows continue to fly the pro bono flag high by volunteering with our programmes or taking on other roles in the charity.?Read about the life-changing and valuable work done by our pro bono lawyers during and after their term in this series.
Ng Pei Qi was a CLAS Fellow in 2021.?Currently, she is a volunteer with our Criminal Legal Aid Scheme.
Her story:
"My client suffers from mild intellectual disability. While he was around 29 years old at the time of the offence, he behaved in a childlike way at times because of the deficits in his intellectual and adaptive functioning.
His intellectual disability played a major contributory role in the commission of his four offences. My client had called the fire brigade multiple times after what were stressful situations for him because he liked seeing red fire trucks and firefighters in their uniforms.
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His family situation was not ideal. His father had passed on at an early age, and his mother was the only person taking care of him, with the support of her family members.
We decided to send my client for an assessment at Promises Healthcare Pte Ltd, a private psychiatrist that concluded he did suffer from mild intellectual disability. However, without a game plan for his successful rehabilitation, we could not convince the Prosecution that my client was a vulnerable offender who needed a second chance.
We then decided to connect the client to MINDS’ Community Forensic Services to develop a proper rehabilitation plan. This would help to address the root cause of his offending behaviour, and ensure sustainable aftercare, and counselling.?Armed with more information, a plan, and support from the community, we tried again to convince the Prosecution to give our client a warning. We highlighted the client’s condition and the rehabilitation plan intended to support our client, and his family in the long run.
The Prosecution acceded to my request and issued a 12-month conditional stern warning in lieu of prosecution.?The client is now going through MINDS’ programme, where he receives counselling at least twice a month, is a part of the Minds Me Too! Club, and receives caregiver support."
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