Yaacob bin Haji Md. Sam

On the judicial record

Shows a Court of Appeal judge engaging across land and specific performance, capital criminal appeals, case transfer under the Criminal Procedure Code, and the accountability of the authorities for a death in custody.

Yaacob bin Haji Md. Sam sits in the Court of Appeal, and this collection spans land, commercial and criminal appellate work, with judgments in both English and Bahasa Malaysia. Land features through a sale-and-purchase agreement and a claim for specific performance complicated by allegations of fraud and conspiracy and the defence of a bona fide purchaser for valuable consideration. Public accountability and liberty are engaged in appeals 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. Criminal appeals are prominent, including an armed robbery causing death by the use of a firearm in which both appellants were sentenced to death and the court examined whether the prosecution had made out its case, and a criminal-procedure matter on the transfer of a case to the High Court under section 417 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Estate and banking matters round out the range, including a probate or inheritance dispute among family members. 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 scrutiny of the evidence supporting a serious conviction and its attention to the accountability of the authorities for a person who dies in custody, matters where the stakes for the individual are at their highest. The collection shows how a single appellate judge engages across land, crime and the protection of the individual against the State, testing in each whether the court below reached a result the evidence and the law could support, and intervening where it did not.