Court Denies Leave To Seven Prisoners Detained At Ruler's Pleasure, Indefinite Sentences Upheld

PUTRAJAYA, April 20 (Bernama) — In a legal setback, seven prisoners convicted of serious offences committed during their youth have failed in their bid to obtain leave for a full review of their "indefinite detention" at the pleasure of the ruler.

A five-man bench of the Federal Court, led by Chief Justice Datuk Seri Wan Ahmad Farid Wan Salleh, ruled that the applicants did not meet the threshold required for leave to review the earlier decisions under Rule 137 of the Rules of the Federal Court 1995.

The bench also comprised Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak Datuk Azizah Nawawi, and Federal Court judges Datuk Rhodzariah Bujang, Datuk Che Mohd Ruzima Ghazali, and Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah.

Delivering the unanimous judgment, Justice Sequerah stated that no special circumstances existed to justify granting the applications.

He further affirmed that the applicants' rights under Article 5 (right to life) and Article 8 (equality before the law and equal protection) of the Federal Constitution had not been violated.

Justice Sequerah explained that Section 97 of the Child Act 2001 explicitly mandates that child offenders convicted of serious crimes, including murder, drug trafficking, or kidnapping, shall be detained at the pleasure of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the Ruler, or the Yang di-Pertua Negeri. Such detention, he affirmed, is lawfully recognised as valid custody under the law.

“Therefore, the provision “detention at the pleasure…” does not violate Article 5 because the child offender is convicted after the due process of a trial and at its conclusion, the sentence passed is in accordance with a validly passed law enacted by Parliament,” he said.

He noted that alternative remedies remain available to the applicants but have yet to be exhausted. These include Section 97(4) of the Child Act 2001, Regulations 54 and 113 of the Prison Regulations 2000, as well as the power of pardon under Article 42 of the Federal Constitution.

These remedies, Justice Sequerah said, offer the applicants a real chance for early release by way of the Board of Visiting Justices' yearly recommendations. 

Justice Sequerah also dismissed as unmeritorious the argument of applicants' counsel that their legal position had been altered to their disadvantage by the passing of two Acts related to the death penalty.

“The introduction of Act 846 (the Abolition of Mandatory Death Penalty Act 2023) and Act 847 (The Revision of Sentence of Death and Imprisonment for Natural Life (Temporary Jurisdiction of The Federal Court) Act 2023 therefore, changed nothing with regard to the applicants’ equal rights before the law,” he added.

He further ruled that decisions made by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the Rulers, the Yang di-Pertua Negeri, and the Pardons Board under Article 42 of the Federal Constitution are non-justiciable, meaning they cannot be brought before the courts for judicial review.

In their applications, the prisoners contended that changes in the law, specifically the abolition of the mandatory death sentence and life imprisonment, required their sentences to be reviewed and reconsidered.

They claimed their continued indefinite detention amounted to a miscarriage of justice and was unconstitutional.

The seven prisoners, now aged between 27 and 36, were convicted of murder, kidnapping and drug trafficking offences committed during their teenage years.

Due to their age at the time of the offences, they were sentenced to be detained at the pleasure of the Ruler instead of receiving the mandatory death penalty.

One of the applicants, a Vietnamese national, has been incarcerated for nearly a decade following his arrest in February 2015, when he was just 17 years old.

At today's proceedings, deputy public prosecutors Datuk Seri Saiful Edris Zainuddin, Afzainizam Abdul Aziz, Noor Farhana Adham, and Arif Aizuddin Masrom appeared for the prosecution.

The applicants were represented by lawyers Abdul Rashid Ismail, Khaizan Sharizad Ab Razak, and Jacqueline Hannah Albert. 

— BERNAMA