Amer Hamzah bin Arshad

On the court record

Amer Hamzah bin Arshad appears in the reported corpus as criminal-defence and public-law counsel in serious matters before the High Court, Court of Appeal and Federal Court. His drug-defence work is visible in a Court of Appeal appeal against conviction and sentence for trafficking under section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 and possession under section 39A(1), where a central question was whether the prosecution had established the identity of the drugs beyond reasonable doubt. At the Federal Court he was engaged as counsel for the accused in a homicide matter concerning the burden of proving the three elements under seksyen 300(c) Kanun Keseksaan (section 300(c) of the Penal Code) and, in particular, the meaning of the phrase that an injury be mencukupi pada lazimnya menyebabkan kematian (sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death).

His reported work also reaches offences by young offenders and anti-corruption. In a full criminal trial argued on a judgment in Bahasa Malaysia, two child offenders raised a defence under Exception 4 to the Penal Code, which succeeded, reducing a charge under seksyen 299 to sentencing under seksyen 304(a) Kanun Keseksaan (section 304(a) of the Penal Code), with the public interest weighed in sentencing. He was also engaged in a matter concerning four charges under section 18 of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2009. Across these reported decisions his work spans the defence of drug trafficking, the law of homicide at the apex court, the culpability of young offenders and anti-corruption litigation, marking Amer Hamzah bin Arshad as counsel engaged in serious criminal defence, attentive both to the elements the prosecution must prove and to the mitigating framework that governs the culpability and sentencing of the accused. The reported matters, ranging from a capital-adjacent drug charge to the fine construction of the murder provision at the apex court and the reduced culpability of children, mark a practice that engages the criminal law at its most consequential and its most doctrinally demanding.