Lee Kuan Yew, who had been assigned the case, explains that he did what any advocate does: He "worked on the weaknesses of the jury -- their biases, their prejudices, their reluctance really to find four Mussulmen [Muslims] guilty of killing in cold blood or in a heat of great passion, religious passion, an RAF officer, his wife and child." And he employed "the simple tricks of advocacy -- contradictions between one witness and another, contradiction between a witness and his previous statement to the police and the preliminary enquiry."
When the jury acquitted the murderers, Lee Kuan Kew reports, "The judge was thoroughly disgusted. I went home feeling quite sick because I knew I'd discharged my duty as required of me, but I knew I had done wrong." He thereupon concluded that no government in which he had a say would employ this foreign, "foolish, completely incongruous system." Pointing out that the French and other Latin nations do not use trial by jury, Lee Kuan Kew argues that it is too "alien" to the basic social attitudes of many other cultures, including those of Asia.
In his Memoirs, Lee adds more detail, but the main points still hold. Thus, it turns out that the young barrister defended four out of fourteen defendants; he brought judge and jury to the scene of the murders at night, demonstrating how difficult recognizing individuals would have been in such conditions; and although "Chinese and Indian jurors were never happy to convict if it meant sending a man to his death," the evidence weighed heavily enough upon their consciences that they did in fact convict nine of the fourteen of "causing grievous hurt," though three of his own clients "got off scot-free" (144). In the Memoirs Lee also explains in more detail why he believed his clients guilty, but the conclusion he drew from this painful experience of the jury system remained the same: "I had no faith in a system that allowed the supersitition, ignorance, biases, and prejudics of seven jurymen to determine guilt or innocence" (144).
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