Sivananthan

On the court record

Sivananthan appears in the reported judgments as a criminal-litigation practice with a strong appellate profile, working across the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) and appearing most often as counsel for the accused and for appellants. Its corpus is centred on serious criminal matters. A recurring category is culpable homicide not amounting to murder under section 304(a) of the Penal Code read with the common-intention provision in section 34, where the court considers the defence raised and the appropriate sentence, and the record shows sentences of imprisonment imposed on several charges to run concurrently. Drug prosecutions under seksyen 39B(1) Akta Dadah Berbahaya 1952 (section 39B(1) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952) also feature, including the application of the statutory presumptions of trafficking and the elements the prosecution must establish. The firm's criminal-procedure work includes applications to amend a notice of appeal under section 310 of the Criminal Procedure Code, and the effect of a mistake by counsel (kekhilafan peguam) on an appeal. It also appears as respondent to appeals brought by the prosecution against a trial judge's decision to acquit, defending the acquittal. A distinctive feature is a defence of sudden fight (pergaduhan mengejut) and the statutory provision governing it. Acting predominantly on the defence side, and with a substantial appellate practice, the firm occupies a role that comparatively few practices in the corpus fill — carrying homicide and drug matters through trial and appeal, and resisting prosecution appeals against acquittals — and its corpus is, in effect, a record of the defence and appellate sides of serious criminal litigation. The sudden-fight defence is a recurring theme in its homicide work, since a successful reliance on it can reduce what would otherwise be murder to culpable homicide not amounting to murder, with a correspondingly different sentence. Its appearances resisting prosecution appeals against acquittals add a further dimension, requiring the firm to defend a favourable trial outcome against the argument that the judge below was wrong to find the charge unproven.