Court upholds guilty verdict in "Yoga Ball” murder case

The Court of Appeal issued a verdict on the “Yoga Ball” murder case on Tuesday, rejecting Khaw Kim Sun’s appeal and upholding the original ruling.

Khaw, an associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was convicted in 2018 on two counts of murder and was sentenced to life in prison after a jury at the High Court unanimously found him guilty.

The Malaysian professor serving a life sentence for murdering his wife and daughter with a carbon monoxide-filled yoga ball in 2015 sought to appeal in 2018, stating that the deaths were “an unfortunate accident”.

The Court of Appeal heard Khaw’s appeal in December 2020 and issued a verdict on Tuesday upholding the original guilty verdict.

In the 2018 trial, prosecutor Andrew Bruce SC said Khaw, an expert in anesthesiology, put a yoga ball leaking carbon monoxide in the boot of a Mini Cooper driven by his wife on May 22, 2015.

Khaw’s wife, Wong Siew Fing, 47, and their second child, Lily Khaw Li Ling, 16, were found unconscious at the Sai O Village bus stop. Doctors found that they had died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Khaw’s lawyers had previously argued that the trial judge, Justice Judianna Barnes Wai-ling, had provided an unfair summary of evidence before deliberations.

Leading counsel Christopher Grounds said that the wife and the daughter could not be ruled out as the persons who had placed the yoga ball in the car.

But Justice Jeremy Poon Shiu-chor, chief judge of the High Court, said that there was evidence from the maid, Siti Maesaroh, that the two victims were not holding anything when they entered the car that day.

Khaw had testified that the carbon monoxide was to be used in an experiment on rabbits, but scientists also testified that any findings from Khaw’s experiment would not be transferable to humans, and was therefore not useful in a clinical setting.