Aina Melina Johan Arif Lim

On the court record

Aina Melina Johan Arif Lim's reported practice, on this record, is criminal appellate defence, appearing in the Court of Appeal for accused persons as the appellant in a group of related homicide appeals heard together.

Each appeal concerns a conviction for culpable homicide not amounting to murder under section 304(a) of the Penal Code, read together with section 34 of the same Act — the provision that fixes several accused with a common intention where a criminal act is done in furtherance of it. Argued as a linked set, the appeals trace the prosecution's narrative from the discovery of the deceased through the arrival of the investigating officer and the forensic team, the post-mortem, the arrests and the identification of the deceased.

A recurring focus across the appeals is sentence. The judgments record the concern that the sentence imposed should be in step with the current trend of sentencing for the offence, and that the public interest is a material consideration in fixing the appropriate term — the kind of appellate argument that seeks to align an individual sentence with the established pattern rather than to disturb the conviction alone.

Because these matters were heard as a coordinated group of appeals arising from a single set of events, they show a counsel working one tightly defined area of the criminal law — the ingredients of common intention under section 34 of the Penal Code, the boundary of culpable homicide under section 304(a), and the calibration of sentence against the prevailing trend — across several accused at once. The practice on this record is focused, appellate criminal defence in the Court of Appeal, directed at the proper evaluation of the case against each accused and at ensuring that any sentence is proportionate and consistent with settled sentencing practice. It is work argued wholly in the Court of Appeal.