Aina Melina Binti Johan Ariff Lim

On the court record

Aina Melina Binti Johan Ariff Lim appears in the reported corpus as criminal-defence counsel, and her reported appearances are dominated by drug-trafficking appeals to the Court of Appeal. The charges recur under section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, punishable under section 39B(2), often argued alongside a possession charge under section 12(2). The grounds she advances are the familiar battleground of trafficking appeals: whether the trial judge misdirected himself on the burden of proof — in one matter the court's concern was that the accused need only raise a reasonable doubt once the statutory presumption in section 2 of the Act was invoked, rather than discharge a burden on a balance of probabilities — and whether the judge properly subjected the prosecution's evidence to maximum evaluation, gave adequate weight to a defence witness who had claimed ownership of the incriminating bag, or failed to consider material contradictions.

Her appeals also probe the outcome of the trial below. In one Court of Appeal matter the original trafficking charge had been reduced to one under section 39A(2), and the accused had been sentenced to ten years' imprisonment from the date of arrest and ten strokes of the rotan (cane), with the appeal testing whether the defence had been sufficiently considered. A matter argued on a judgment in Bahasa Malaysia records charges under seksyen 39B(1)(a) Akta Dadah Berbahaya 1952 (section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952) together with seksyen 6 and seksyen 12(2), and raised an adverse inference under seksyen 114(g) Akta Keterangan 1950 (section 114(g) of the Evidence Act 1950) and a complaint that the defence had been prejudiced, amounting to a salah laksana keadilan (miscarriage of justice), with section 182A of the Criminal Procedure Code in issue. The reported matters mark her as counsel focused on the defence of serious drug prosecutions on appeal.