Shan & Selva

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates the joint appellate representation of co-accused charged under section 304(a) read with section 34 of the Penal Code, and the role of sentencing trends in the appellate review of homicide sentences.

Shan & Selva appears in the corpus as appellate counsel in homicide prosecutions, acting for appellants before the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) in a connected group of appeals against conviction and sentence.

The firm's reported work centres on charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under section 304(a) of the Penal Code, read together with section 34 of the same Code, which fixes each participant in a common intention with liability for the criminal act of the group. Because the appeals arose from a single incident involving several co-appellants, the firm advanced a coordinated challenge on behalf of the group, the judgment tracing the course of the investigation from the discovery of the deceased and the arrival of the investigating officer and forensic team, through the post-mortem and identification of the deceased, to the arrests, and addressing the public interest in the outcome.

A significant part of the argument concerned sentence. The court measured the sentence imposed against the current trend of sentencing for the offence, a comparison that has become central to appellate practice in homicide cases where the conviction itself is not readily disturbed but the length of the custodial term remains open to review. In appeals of this kind the appellate court's task is to ensure that the sentence is neither out of step with comparable cases nor disproportionate to the gravity of the conduct and the degree of each participant's involvement.

The appellants are referred to here by their procedural role, in keeping with the treatment of natural persons named only as parties. The firm's record is a focused criminal-appellate practice in homicide matters, characterised by the joint representation of co-accused arising from a common incident and by a sustained engagement with the principles that govern sentencing for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.