MALAYSIA: NOT ALL 6 CONVICTED OF MURDERING DPP DESERVE DEATH SENTENCE, SAYS NGO

July 20, 2020:

A NGO against the mandatory death penalty on 17 July 2020 said not all the six sentenced to hang for the murder of a deputy public prosecutor in 2015 deserve to be sent to the gallows.
Malaysians Against Death Penalty and Torture (Madpet) said while the sextet were found guilty of involvement in deputy public prosecutor Kevin Morais’s murder, they did not all deserve the death sentence.
“The person who paid for or ordered the murder ought to receive the highest sentence.
“Maybe the person who did the actual killing deserves severe punishment, but the rest of them, depending on their involvement and participation, ought to be sentenced accordingly by the judge, based on the facts and circumstances of the case,” Madpet’s spokesperson Charles Hector said in a statement.
He said this in reiterating a call for the abolition of the mandatory death penalty, arguing that it deprived the trial judge of the discretion to sentence any person convicted of murder justly.
The judge, he added, had no choice but to follow the law.
Hector also said the country must do away with all mandatory sentences, not just the death penalty.
Judges and courts, he said, should be left to decide on the appropriate sentence for the crime in each and every case.
“We should trust our judges, courts and the judiciary to impose an appropriate and just sentence, depending on the facts and circumstances of each individual case, after also taking into consideration all mitigating and aggravating factors.”
Former military doctor R Kunaseegaran, along with R Dinishwaran, AK Thinesh Kumar, M Vishwanath, S Nimalan and S Ravi Chandaran, were found guilty on 10 July 2020 of murdering Morais.