SAFUAN SAFRI BIN SAIFULBAHRI v Pendakwa Raya

Case Significance

Illustrates the limited, supervisory role of an appellate court in reviewing sentence, and the settled emphasis in offences against children on the protection of children and the public interest as the dominant considerations, with reduced weight on personal mitigation, particularly where two courts below have imposed concurrent sentences.

This Court of Appeal decision at Putrajaya forms part of a group of consolidated appeals brought by an appellant convicted of sexual offences against a child. The charges were laid before the Sessions Court under the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017, including sections 14(a), 16, 26 and 27, on which the appellant was convicted; the High Court affirmed the convictions and sentences on appeal, and the present appeals to the Court of Appeal were directed at the sentences. The role of the Court of Appeal on such an appeal is a supervisory one: it does not resentence afresh but asks whether the sentencing court erred in principle or imposed a sentence that was manifestly excessive or wrong. Reviewing the sentences imposed for the several charges, the court took into account the appellant's plea in mitigation, but stressed that in cases concerning sexual crimes against children the public interest must be given priority over the interests of the individual offender. It was not persuaded that the Sessions Court, whose sentences the High Court had already confirmed, had fallen into any error that would warrant appellate interference. It also reflects the settled position that where two courts below have concurrently arrived at the same sentence, an appellant faces a heavy burden in persuading a third court to disturb it. Accordingly, the court unanimously dismissed the appeals against sentence and ordered that the sentences imposed for all the charges be maintained. The dismissal left the sentences imposed by the Sessions Court, and already tested once on appeal to the High Court, wholly undisturbed, the appellant having identified no error of principle to justify a third court's intervention. The judgment is a useful illustration of the limited role of an appellate court in reviewing sentence, and of the consistent emphasis, in offences against children, on the protection of children and the public interest as the dominant sentencing considerations, over which personal mitigation carries reduced weight.