Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan)

What this court decides

The Court of Appeal corpus is the site's heaviest concentration of serious-crime appellate reasoning — s.39B trafficking appeals foremost — alongside a broad band of civil and judicial-review appeals from the High Court.

The Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) is the intermediate appellate court in Malaysia, sitting between the High Court and the Federal Court, and the character of this collection reflects that position. Almost every matter is an appeal from a decision of the High Court, and the single largest concentration is criminal: appeals against conviction and sentence in prosecutions under seksyen 39B(1)(a) Akta Dadah Berbahaya 1952 (section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952) for trafficking in dangerous drugs recur throughout, frequently read with seksyen 34 Kanun Keseksaan (section 34 of the Penal Code — common intention). Related criminal appeals engage charges under the Kidnapping Act 1961 and questions of admissibility, such as how much of the information received from an accused is admissible under seksyen 27 Akta Keterangan 1950 (section 27 of the Evidence Act 1950).

The civil side of the collection is broad. It includes appeals against awards of compensation in land acquisition (pengambilan tanah) matters, applications for forfeiture of property under the Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act 2001 (AMLATFPUAA 2001), and appeals arising out of judicial review — for example, a challenge to a development order (perintah pembangunan) issued by a local planning authority. Questions of evidence and civil procedure run through many of these appeals, since the court's task is to decide whether the judge below erred in law or in the treatment of the evidence rather than to retry the dispute.

Because the court sits in panels of three, a number of judges appear across many of the reported decisions; among those appearing most often in this collection are Azmi bin Ariffin, Azman bin Abdullah, Noorin binti Badaruddin and Mohamed Zaini bin Mazlan. The judgments here typically turn on the appellate standard of review — whether the trial court's findings were plainly wrong — rather than on a fresh assessment of the witnesses.