Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on November 18, 2015.

 

KUALA LUMPUR: Putrajaya plans to table a bill in March next year to abolish the mandatory death penalty in drug-related offences, de facto law minister Nancy Shukri said yesterday.

She said this would allow judges to use their discretion to choose between sentencing a person to jail and the gallows in non-criminal cases, such as drug-related offences.

“What we are looking at is the abolishment of the mandatory death sentence. It is not easy to amend and we are working on it,” she told a press conference after a round-table discussion on the abolishment of the mandatory death penalty in Parliament yesterday.

“We can get rid of the word ‘mandatory’ to allow judges to use their discretion in drug-related offences.”

She said Attorney-General Tan Sri Mohamed Apandi Ali was supportive of the move, adding that the latter’s interview with The Malaysian Insider, in which he had thrown support for the abolishment of the mandatory death sentence.

Mohamed Apandi said, in the report published last Friday, he would propose to the Cabinet that the mandatory death penalty be scrapped, adding that it was a “paradox”, as it robbed judges of their discretion to impose sentences on convicted criminals.

“If I had my way, I would introduce the option for the judge in cases where it involves capital punishment. Give the option to the judge either to hang him or send him to prison.

“Then we’re working towards a good administration of criminal justice,” he told The Malaysian Insider.

Mohamed Apandi said this would be in line with the “universal thinking” of capital punishment, although he denied calling for the death penalty to be abolished altogether.

“Not to say that I am for absolute abolition of capital punishment, but at least we go in stages. We take step by step.”

A mandatory death sentence is imposed in Malaysia in cases involving murder, certain firearm offences, drug trafficking and treason. — The Malaysian Insider

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