Hisyam Teh (Kuala Lumpur)

On the court record

The firm's record concentrates on fair-trial and disclosure arguments in capital drug appeals, including the prosecution's duty under section 51A of the Criminal Procedure Code to disclose favourable facts and to make witnesses available to the defence.

Hisyam Teh (Kuala Lumpur) appears in the corpus as appellate counsel in dangerous-drugs prosecutions, acting for appellants before the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) in appeals against conviction and sentence.

The firm's reported work centres on charges of trafficking under section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, and is marked by a sustained emphasis on the fairness of the trial and the prosecution's disclosure obligations. In one appeal the firm argued that the appellant had been denied a fair trial because the prosecution had failed to offer the tenant of the premises to the defence as a witness, and because it had not disclosed favourable facts to the appellant, engaging the prosecution's duty of disclosure under section 51A(1)(c) of the Criminal Procedure Code, though the court held the non-disclosure to be a mere irregularity that had not occasioned a miscarriage of justice. The appeal also engaged whether section 182A of the Criminal Procedure Code had been complied with in the full consideration of the defence at the close of the defence case, the presumption under section 37(b) and the adverse-inference principle under section 114(g) of the Evidence Act 1950.

In a further appeal, argued in Malay and read with section 34 of the Penal Code, the firm engaged the admissibility of an agent provocateur's evidence under section 40A of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, whether a prima facie case had been made against both accused, common intention, and the correct application of the presumption under seksyen 37(da), the court treating evidence of a sale as direct evidence.

The accused persons are referred to here by their procedural role. The firm's record is a focused criminal-appellate practice in capital drug matters, distinguished by its concentration on fair-trial and disclosure arguments as the means of testing the safety of a conviction.