Mohammad Abdullah Bin Mohamed v Pendakwa Raya

Case Significance

Illustrates the appellate treatment of the competency and sufficiency of a child witness under sections 118 and 133A of the Evidence Act 1950, and of an unnotified alibi treated as an afterthought, in affirming a murder conviction and death sentence.

This Court of Appeal decision concerns an appeal against a conviction and death sentence for murder under section 302 of the Penal Code ("seksyen 302 Kanun Keseksaan"). The appellant had been tried in the High Court on an amended charge of murdering the deceased, his young daughter, and after the prosecution called nineteen witnesses the trial judge found a prima facie case and called the defence. The appellant gave sworn evidence and called no other witness. At the close of the defence the High Court convicted him and imposed the sentence of death by hanging ("hukuman gantung sampai mati"), against which he appealed. The appeal engaged the reception of the evidence of a child of tender years under sections 118 and 133A of the Evidence Act 1950, including the child's competency and whether the witness possessed sufficient intelligence to testify. It also engaged the appellant's alibi defence, which the prosecution argued was a mere afterthought and a bare denial advanced without the notice of alibi required of the defence, and the principle that evidence framed only as a possibility is weak. The Court weighed the mitigating and aggravating factors and noted that the Abolition of Mandatory Death Penalty Act 2023 (Act 846), in force from 4 July 2023, conferred a discretion to impose either death or imprisonment of not less than 30 and not more than 40 years with not fewer than 12 strokes of whipping where death was not imposed. Having considered the facts and the law from every angle, the Court unanimously dismissed the appeal against sentence and affirmed the High Court's sentence, directing that the appellant be brought to a place of execution to be hanged. The judgment illustrates the appellate treatment of child-witness evidence and of a late, unnotified alibi in a capital murder prosecution. The Court also endorsed the trial judge's assessment that the appellant's account, offered late and unsupported by any other witness, did not raise a reasonable doubt on the elements the prosecution had proved.