NOORAZMAN BIN YUSOFF v Pendakwa Raya [Timbalan Pendakwa Raya (TPR), Jabatan Peguam Negara]

Case Significance

Dismisses an appeal against a six-year sentence and supervision order for self-administration of methamphetamine under section 15(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, the Sessions Judge having properly weighed the antecedents, the guilty plea and mitigation.

This High Court (Temerloh) decision is a criminal appeal against a Sessions Court decision that had accepted the appellant's plea of guilty and convicted the appellant on a drugs charge. The Sessions Court had sentenced the appellant to six years' imprisonment from the date of arrest and to police supervision for a period after completion of the imprisonment term. The appellant was not ordered to be caned because the appellant was over 50 years of age at the time of sentencing.

The charge, as recorded, alleged that on 1 May 2024 at a narcotics office within the Raub district of Pahang the appellant had administered to himself a dangerous drug of the methamphetamine type, and that the appellant had three previous convictions under section 15(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, dating from 2018, so that the appellant had committed a further offence under section 15(1)(a) of that Act. The appeal, brought against the Sessions Court's decision, challenged the sentence.

In dismissing the appeal, the High Court examined the sentencing exercise of the Sessions Judge and found that appropriate weight had been given to the appellant's record of previous convictions, so that there was no basis for the High Court to disturb the decision on that account. It noted that the appellant's plea of guilty had also been taken into account by the Sessions Judge as a mitigating factor, a point the High Court found difficult to disagree with, and that the Sessions Judge had duly considered the plea in mitigation before passing a sentence appropriate to the case. The court concluded that the sentence accorded with established sentencing principles and that there was no ground to interfere with or disturb the Sessions Court's decision. The judgment illustrates the appellate court's reluctance to interfere with a sentence properly arrived at, where the trial court has weighed the antecedents, the guilty plea and the mitigation.