Young woman’s jail term for fatal stabbing doubled to 12 years

 Appellate court says a six-and-a-half-year sentence is too lenient for the woman, who was 19 when she fatally stabbed her boyfriend during a struggle after he demanded sex at a hotel.

The Court of Appeal increased the young woman’s prison sentence from six years and six months to 12 years for fatally stabbing her 29-year-old boyfriend at a Johor hotel in 2022.

PETALING JAYA:

The Court of Appeal has increased a woman’s prison sentence for fatally stabbing her boyfriend in a hotel room from six years and six months to 12 years, ruling that the original sentence did not reflect the gravity of the offence.

A three-member bench comprising Justices Zaini Mazlan, Wong Kian Kheong and Evrol Mariette Peters unanimously allowed the prosecution’s appeal against the sentence imposed by the Johor Bahru High Court.

Peters, who delivered the broad grounds of judgment, said the High Court had been “over-sympathetic” towards the accused by placing excessive emphasis on her age while failing to give sufficient weight to the seriousness of the killing.

The Court of Appeal is sitting in Johor Bahru this week.

The woman, identified only as Shy to protect her identity, was 19 at the time of the incident on Sept 20, 2022.

She and her 29-year-old boyfriend, with whom she had been in a relationship for almost a year, checked into a hotel near Jalan Austin Heights.

According to court documents, an argument broke out after the man demanded sex. Shy refused, saying she was menstruating.

He then threatened her with a knife, prompting her to struggle with him for the weapon. During the struggle, she stabbed him multiple times in the chest.

An autopsy found 28 injuries, with multiple stab wounds to the chest listed as the cause of death.

Shy surrendered to the police and was initially charged with murder under Section 302 of the Penal Code.

Following representations by her lawyer, the prosecution agreed to reduce the charge to culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304(a). She pleaded guilty to the amended charge, and the High Court sentenced her to six years and six months in jail.

In allowing the prosecution’s appeal, the Court of Appeal noted that the maximum sentence under Section 304(a) was 30 years. Parliament increased the maximum from 20 years in 2007, reflecting the seriousness with which such offences were to be treated, it said.

Peters said the High Court also erred in treating Shy’s loss of youthful offender status as a mitigating factor.

She was 22 when convicted and therefore no longer fell within the statutory definition of a youthful offender, the court said.

The appellate court also rejected the suggestion that the circumstances of the struggle significantly reduced the seriousness of the offence.

“This was not a single impulsive stab. The multiple injuries demonstrate a sustained violent attack,” Peters said.

The court acknowledged Shy’s youth, guilty plea, remorse, lack of previous convictions and psychiatric condition as mitigating factors.

However, it said these had to be balanced against the 28 injuries, the use of a knife, the targeting of the chest and the loss of a 29-year-old man’s life.

Peters drew on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice to underline the need for a proportionate sentence.

“She is young, remorseful and traumatised, and for that, she deserves leniency. But she owes a debt, not to Shylock, but to the memory of the deceased and his grieving family,” she said.

The court held that 12 years was proportionate and necessary in the public interest, and ordered the sentence to take effect from the date of Shy’s arrest.

Deputy public prosecutor Noor Farhana Adham appeared for the prosecution while K S Pang represented the woman. - FMT