Salehuddin Saidin & Associates

On the court record

Salehuddin Saidin & Associates appears in the reported judgments as a criminal-appellate defence practice, acting almost exclusively as counsel for appellants and for the accused, and its docket is concentrated in the appellate courts — the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) and the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan) — as well as the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi). The defining category of its work is the appeal against conviction and sentence (rayuan terhadap sabitan dan hukuman) in serious drug prosecutions: charges of trafficking under seksyen 39B(1)(a) Akta Dadah Berbahaya 1952 (section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952), often read with the possession provision in section 12(2), where the recurring grounds concern whether the trial court (Hakim Mahkamah Tinggi) correctly evaluated the evidence and whether the conviction was safe. In several of these appeals the record shows the appellate court holding that the High Court had carried out a proper evaluation of the evidence and that the conviction was safe (sabitan adalah selamat), and in others revisiting the burden that falls on the defence at the close of the prosecution case. The firm's criminal work also reaches culpable homicide not amounting to murder under section 304(a) of the Penal Code, read with the common-intention provision in section 34, and criminal breach of trust under section 409. Acting overwhelmingly on the defence side, and overwhelmingly on appeal, the firm occupies a role that comparatively few practices in the corpus fill — carrying serious criminal convictions, many of them capital or near-capital drug matters, up to the Court of Appeal and the Federal Court for review of both conviction and sentence. In these appeals the questions are typically whether the trial court gave adequate weight to the defence raised, whether the chain of evidence supporting possession and knowledge was complete, and whether the sentence imposed was warranted on the facts. The firm's consistent presence on the appellant's side across a run of such matters marks it as one of the practices in the corpus most closely associated with the defence of serious drug prosecutions on appeal, a role that demands sustained engagement with the evidential thresholds and statutory presumptions peculiar to trafficking cases.