Hang On, Is The Death Penalty Dead And Buried? - Nadzarin Kuok Puthucheary & Tan ("NKPT")

Afiq Iskandar Aziz

Legal Associate
Kuala Lumpur

On 10 June 2022, the Law Minister from the Prime Minister’s Department announced that the Government of Malaysia had agreed to abolish the mandatory death penalty.

It is a welcomed announcement. For years, countless bodies and organizations had advocated for the death penalty to be abolished. Come 2022, Malaysia is moving towards the right direction. It is progressive and shows willingness to reform what is necessary.

The decision was engineered by the Special Committee to Review Substitute Sentences for the Mandatory Death Penalty, consisting of legal and academic experts and spearheaded by the former Chief Justice, Tun Richard Malanjum. The special committee, which was established in 2019, had presented a report to Dato Sri Dr. Wan Junaidi earlier this year and recommended, among others, for the mandatory death penalty to be substituted with punishments based on restorative justice.

Simply put, a new system will be put in place to assess and evaluate multiple factors before passing a sentence proportionate to the crime committed, rather than just dishing out the death penalty because the law says so.

Now, there are 22 offences which carries possible death penalty while 11 offences carry the mandatory death penalty.

Statistics show a majority of the mandatory death penalty sentencing is related to section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 i.e. drug trafficking. In that respect, many have argued that it is often the case that the drug mules (some who may be unsuspecting victims) are the ones on the receiving end of the mandatory death penalty while the drug kingpins roam free. This defeats the deterrent and preventive theory of punishments in criminal offences.

However, , it is worthy to note that only mandatory death penalty is to be abolished – not the death penalty as a whole. This really means that a Judge will no longer be compelled by legislation to sentence someone to death upon conviction (as is the case currently for some offences) but instead would be granted discretionary powers to determine if the accused ought to be put to death or otherwise.

This new position as announced by the Prime Ministers’ Department is still work in progress. It would require multiple amendments to various statutes. The amendments would also need to be proposed, tabled, debated, and passed in the Parliament first.

However, when the amendments do come into force, it will be a lifesaving one at its best, or life-changing at the very least.

About the Author

Afiq Iskandar is a Legal Associate of the firm. He graduated from MARA University of Technology, Malaysia. Afiq has multiple interests in life beyond reading law viz. sports, film, music and poetry. He believes that art, in whatever form they may be, is a necessity of life.