Teen Was Set Free - Joy? Or Fury?
Ceddy on Jul 26 2007 at 1:40 pm
The 17-year-old teen who committed “a most heinous crime” as how Justice Sri Ram put it was set free. All because our country has no law to actually punish the boy, the fact that the boy was held at the pleasure of the King merely resulted to the violation of separation of powers and hence, prominent lawyer Karpal Singh argued that the sentence is “UNCONSTITUTIONAL” or we put it in a lay man’s term - “UNLAWFUL“.
Many of you must be thinking, this is very unfair, then every kid below 18 years old can take a knife or gun or whatever to kill the person he/she does not like and then laughed at the predicted consequence - being set free because at the back of their head, there’s NO LAW in Malaysia that can impose the capital punishment on the kids, unlike the United Kingdom, if convicted, he/she will be sentenced to life imprisonment.
We can be very angry at the judgment to set the teen free, but we need to understand that the judge must have faced a severe dilemma, why? If the teen is actually an adult, the whole process will become easier, convicted? Serve him death penalty, but then again, he is just a child/infant when he committed the crime, therefore the judge has to cram out an idea because:
- Morally speaking, the boy is at fault and since he is already found guilty, the boy must not be set free, I mean come on, you took someone else’s life and just walk away with it?
- But legally, the judge cannot simply sentence the teen, his role is to interpret the law and since there is NO law for him to interpret this time, and since Malaysia does not apply the usage of Jury anymore. He has to make the saddest decision - free the boy.
But does this mean that everything should have a full stop here? Some are thinking that the boy who got set free has already learned from his mistake, but we must not neglect that the boy took someone else’ LIFE. Put yourself in the victim’s mother’s shoes. How would you feel then when your daughter is murdered, you can’t possibly summon her back!
I personally think that our country need to start making a new law to protect the society, the kids are becoming intelligent day by day, thanks to the violent scenes in television programs, movies, games and stuffs. Kids can do unexpected things these days and if the law still protects younger kids, then we can expect more death in the future.
What do you think of the boy being set free? Do you think he deserves it? Or do you think the “punishment” is sufficient for him to learn from his mistakes?
The prosecutors who handled the case were not good enough. They should have tried him as an adult. Unfortunately, in our society, we still have the mentality that at age 12, they are still children and infants.