Wira Hj Ahmad Nasfy bin Hj Yasin

On the judicial record

A clear illustration of appellate reasoning in the most serious cases — circumstantial murder under the Penal Code, capital drug trafficking under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, and a death in custody — where the court weighs proof against the gravity of what is at stake.

Wira Hj Ahmad Nasfy bin Hj Yasin sits in the Court of Appeal, and this collection is criminal and civil appellate work centred on the gravest kinds of case. Homicide is a strong strand: appeals against conviction for murder under section 302 of the Penal Code read with section 34 on common intention, decided on circumstantial evidence and the last-seen-together principle, where the court examined whether the chain of circumstances pointed only to the guilt of the accused. Drug trafficking features through an appeal concerning a charge under section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 and the conviction and sentence that followed. Public accountability and liberty are engaged in a civil appeal arising from a death in custody, where the deceased had been detained for a total of twenty-four days and was never released from the time of his arrest, raising the liability of the detaining authorities to the estate and dependants. Because the Court of Appeal sits in panels and its rulings bind or guide the courts below, these decisions reflect collective reasoning to which this judge contributed. Private individuals and accused persons are referred to by role; corporate, governmental and statutory parties are named. A recurring theme is the appellate court's careful scrutiny of the evidence where the stakes are at their highest — a murder conviction resting on circumstantial evidence, a capital drug charge, the death of a person held in custody. In each the court asks whether the evidence and the law support the result reached below before it will let it stand, and where a conviction rests wholly on circumstantial evidence it examines whether the chain excludes every reasonable hypothesis but guilt. The collection is a clear illustration of appellate reasoning in the most serious criminal and liberty cases, and of the weight the court gives to proof where life and liberty are in issue, whether the setting is a capital charge or the death of a person held in custody.