How May Ling

On the court record

An appellate criminal-prosecution practice in the Court of Appeal, concentrated on drug trafficking and homicide.

How May Ling appears in the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan), and the reported decisions place her mainly on the prosecution side and as respondent in criminal appeals. The dominant subject is drug trafficking under "seksyen 39B(1)(a) Akta Dadah Berbahaya 1952" (section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952), argued as appeals against acquittal and against conviction and sentence, together with homicide under "seksyen 302 Kanun Keseksaan" (section 302 of the Penal Code).

The appeals engage the statutory architecture of a trafficking prosecution — the possession and trafficking presumptions in "seksyen 37(da)" of the Act and the requirement that the prosecution establish a case to answer under the provisions governing the close of its evidence. The adverse-inference provision in "seksyen 114(g) Akta Keterangan 1950" (section 114(g) of the Evidence Act 1950) recurs, as does argument about whether the trial court correctly evaluated the evidence in reaching or declining a conviction. Where the appeal is against an acquittal, the prosecution's task is to show that the trial court erred in law or fact in stopping the case.

Acting as respondent, the reported work is largely defensive of the outcome below — resisting a convicted person's challenge to the safety of the conviction and the length of sentence — while the prosecution appeals seek to restore or increase a conviction the prosecution says was wrongly refused or under-punished. The argument is confined to the appellate record and to questions of law and the correct application of the presumptions.

The overall profile is a focused appellate criminal-prosecution practice in the Court of Appeal, organised around serious drug and homicide offences. The matters turn on the statutory presumptions, the sufficiency of the prosecution case, and the appellate standard for disturbing a trial court's findings, rather than on primary fact-finding, marking a settled appellate speciality.