Tan Sri Dato' Mohd Dusuki bin Mokhtar

On the court record

Engages the constitutional and procedural role of the Attorney General in judicial review, the admission of fresh evidence on appeal, and the elements and partial defences of murder under the Penal Code.

Tan Sri Dato' Mohd Dusuki bin Mokhtar appears in this corpus in public and criminal law at the highest levels of the court system. In the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan) he acted as counsel for the appellant, the Attorney General (Peguam Negara Malaysia), in a judicial-review appeal. The matter raised questions about the Attorney General's role at the leave stage of judicial review under Order 53 rule 3(3) of the Rules of Court 2012 — whether there is a duty to confirm or disclose documents, where the burden of proof lies in respect of disputed evidence, and the distinction between the Attorney General's procedural role and his role as a respondent. A further, connected question concerned fresh evidence at the appellate stage under rule 7(3A) of the Rules of the Court of Appeal 1994: whether that rule codifies or displaces the common-law test in Ladd v Marshall, and the threshold between evidence of "determining influence" and evidence of merely "important influence".

In the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) he appeared as counsel for the prosecution in a murder appeal. The charge was under clause (c) of section 300 of the Penal Code, and the appeal engaged the element of intention and the partial defence in Exception 1 to section 300 — grave and sudden provocation — together with the requirement of proportionality between the provocation and the response. The interplay between the definition of murder and the exceptions that reduce it to culpable homicide not amounting to murder is a central theme of the substantive criminal law.

Across these matters, the reported work engages the constitutional and procedural role of the Attorney General in judicial review, the admission of fresh evidence on appeal and its relationship to Ladd v Marshall, and the elements and partial defences of murder under the Penal Code.