Death Penalty News

The court had dismissed 2 last-ditch attempts last month by a pair of drug traffickers to stop their scheduled executions. No domestic law or international treaty explicitly prohibits the execution of people who have an IQ of less than 70, the Court of Appeal said in written grounds on Wednesday (March 9). The court issued 2 sets of detailed grounds this week to explain why it had dismissed two last-ditch attempts in February by a pair of drug traffickers to stop their scheduled executions. In the later bid, lawyer Charles Yeo, who acted for Singaporean Roslan Bakar, 51, and Malaysian Pausi Jefridin, 37, had argued that it was unlawful to execute people who have an IQ of less than 70. Mr Yeo contended that Roslan has an IQ of 74, while Pausi has an IQ of 67. The apex court said: "We rejected that argument primarily on the basis that both appellants had been found by the courts to have no abnormality of mind that impaired their responsibility for the offences they had committed....

International Obligations Undermined When Singapore ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2013, it committed to protect the rights of the more than quarter-million people with disabilities in the city-state. However, the case of Nagaenthran Dharmalingam , sentenced to death for a nonviolent drug offense, has highlighted Singapore’s failure to make those rights a legal reality. Lawyers for Nagaenthran, a 33-year-old Malaysian who has an IQ of 69 and attention hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), have sought to halt his execution, originally scheduled for November 10, 2021, arguing that executing a man with an intellectual disability would violate Singapore’s obligations under the CRPD, which requires equal access to justice, including disability-specific procedural accommodations. Nagaenthran was not provided required support and accommodation for his disabilities to facilitate his effective participation in his trial, nor procedural accommodations to en...

PETALING JAYA: The Malaysian Bar has urged the Singapore government to consider granting clemency to a Sabahan with a low IQ and spare him from the hangman’s noose. Pausi Jefridin and a Singaporean, Roslan Bakar, who also has a low IQ, were sentenced to death in Singapore for drug trafficking in 2010. They are scheduled to be hanged on Wednesday. Bar president AG Kalidas said they hoped the Singapore government would consider the cognitive impairments of Pausi and Roslan. “The circumstances call for humanity and compassion,” he said. Yesterday, Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network executive coordinator Dobby Chew said they had received documents on Pausi’s execution date.  He added that Pausi’s family were informed last Friday about the execution. Kalidas noted that Malaysia and Singapore were signatories of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which states that a mentally impaired person cannot be hanged. “We take cognisance of Singapore’s strict policy ...