Pendakwa Raya v MUHAMMAD FAKRUL AIMAN BIN SAJALI

Case Significance

Illustrates that even after the Abolition of Mandatory Death Penalty Act 2023, the High Court retains a discretion to impose death for murder, and that an unconditional guilty plea coupled with a particularly cruel killing can lead the court to choose the death penalty over imprisonment.

This High Court decision at Klang concerns a murder charge under section 302 of the Penal Code (Kanun Keseksaan) that was disposed of on an unconditional plea of guilty, and the court's decision to impose the death penalty notwithstanding the discretion introduced by recent reform. The accused was charged with the murder of a woman at Sungai Besar, Sabak Bernam, Selangor, over the night of 22 to 23 May 2023. When the charge was read, the accused pleaded guilty; the court, applying the safeguards restated in PP v Nor Zuliana Tahir, satisfied itself that the plea came from the accused's own mouth, that it was unconditional, and that he understood the nature and consequences of his plea, including the punishments available under section 302, before he admitted the facts and the exhibits. In mitigation, the accused asked to be imprisoned rather than sentenced to death, said he had been about to be blamed for a pregnancy, pleaded his youth — he was around 20 to 21 at the time — and pointed to his record as a bright community-college student with a promising future. The prosecution pressed for the death penalty, describing the killing as very cruel and sadistic and planned, the victim being a woman and an expectant mother who was not only stabbed but burned. The court noted that the Abolition of Mandatory Death Penalty Act 2023 gave it, through section 34, the option of imprisonment and caning instead of death, but held that this did not remove its discretion to impose death having regard to the manner of the killing. It found section 293 of the Criminal Procedure Code, on youthful offenders, inapplicable because the offence carried no fine but only imprisonment or capital punishment. Convicting the accused on his plea, the court held that only one sentence matched the cruelty of the act and imposed death by hanging by the neck until dead ("hukuman gantung di leher sehingga mati").