Sarannya Subramaniam

On the court record

The reported matters concentrate on appellate criminal defence in murder and drug-trafficking cases, grounded in Court of Appeal judgments.

Sarannya Subramaniam's reported matters are criminal-defence appeals in the most serious offences, argued before the Court of Appeal. A murder appeal illustrates the work: the charge was under section 302 of the Penal Code, and the appellate questions included whether there was any doubt that the appellant had inflicted the fatal injury with the intention of causing the bodily harm that led to the death, and the credibility and reliability of the evidence against him. Appearing for the appellant, the Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the conviction and sentence imposed by the trial court, in a matter in which a co-accused was acquitted, illustrating how the evidence can point differently at different accused.

The profile also includes drug-trafficking appeals. In related Court of Appeal appeals under section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, the issues concerned proof of possession, custody and control of the drugs and of the appellant's knowledge, and whether the appellant had the power to deal with the drugs as an owner. Appearing for the appellant, the Court, after considering the grounds of the High Court judge, the written and oral submissions and the evidence as a whole, upheld the conviction.

A thread across these decisions is the appellate scrutiny of convictions in capital and near-capital cases, where the defence must probe the sufficiency of the evidence of intention, possession and knowledge, and the credibility of the witnesses, to persuade the appellate court that a conviction is unsafe. The reported work is thus concentrated in serious criminal defence, principally murder under section 302 of the Penal Code and drug trafficking under section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, argued before the Court of Appeal of Malaysia and turning on whether the findings of the trial court can withstand appellate review. The reported work is squarely in the field of serious criminal defence, where the appellate task is to isolate weaknesses in proof of the essential elements and to test whether the trial court's assessment of the witnesses can be sustained.