Rofiah binti Mohamad

On the judicial record

A guide to how a High Court judge exercises its appellate, revisionary and supervisory criminal jurisdiction over drug, corruption and public-order offences and over a Coroner's inquest, largely in Bahasa Malaysia.

Rofiah binti Mohamad sits in the High Court, and this collection is predominantly criminal, with the reasoning framed around criminal procedure and authored largely in Bahasa Malaysia. Drug offences recur, including trafficking in cannabis under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 and possession under section 15(1)(a) punishable under section 39C of the same Act as a repeat offender, heard on appeal from the subordinate courts. Property and public-order offences appear through criminal breach of trust under seksyen 409 Kanun Keseksaan (section 409 of the Penal Code) and assault on a public servant under section 353 of the Penal Code. Corruption features through appeals from the Corruption Sessions Court against charges under section 28(1)(c) of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2009. The court's supervisory and revisionary functions are well represented: a revision under section 323 of the Criminal Procedure Code to set aside and amend an order, and judicial review of a Coroner's decision following an inquest, including a challenge to an open verdict. A municipal matter engages an offence under a local council's trade, business and industry by-laws. The judgments state the charge or the decision under challenge, work through the applicable principles, and record the disposition in the court's operative terms, glossing the Malay as it appears. In keeping with the site's suppression rule, accused persons and applicants are referred to by their role, and are named only where the case name itself is displayed; institutional parties are named. A recurring theme is the High Court's role in reviewing and correcting the decisions of the subordinate courts and the Coroner, whether on appeal, on revision or by judicial review, and its willingness to intervene where the decision below discloses an error the law does not permit to stand. The collection is a useful guide to how a High Court judge exercises its appellate, revisionary and supervisory criminal jurisdiction, and to the different standards that govern each of those routes of challenge.