MALAYSIA: DEATH PENALTY NO LONGER MANDATORY FOR DRUG TRAFFICKING

May 3, 2018:

Malaysians Against Death Penalty and Torture (Madpet) is pleased that the Dangerous Drugs Amendment Act 2017, which received royal assent on 27 December 2017, has finally, after much delay, come into force on 15 March 2018.
The 8 March gazette notification appointing the date of coming into operation of this new law – which will abolish the mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking, giving judge’s discretion to be able to sentence those convicted of drug trafficking to an alternate sentence of life imprisonment with not less than 15 strokes of the whip – was signed by the minister of health. It was odd that it was not the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Azalina Othman, the de facto law minister or the home minister.
It must be pointed out that this still unexplained delay has resulted in grave injustice to at least 10 individuals who had been sentenced to the mandatory death penalty this year until 15 March 2018, because judges still had no discretion to consider and impose any other sentence other than death penalty until the date the Act came into operation. (It must be noted that not all those convicted and sentenced to death for drug trafficking would have been reported by the media.)
This new law, when it came into force, will only benefit those who had not yet been convicted by the High Court. If already convicted and sentenced to death before the law came into force, then even the appellate courts will not have the power to review the death sentence, and impose an alternative sentence for drug trafficking.
The only way that those already sentenced to death can escape the death penalty is if the appellate courts set aside the conviction for drug trafficking.