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SCMP’s Asia desk

A Malaysian court has nearly doubled jail time for a woman who stabbed her boyfriend to death for demanding sex after ruling that the sentencing court had been “over-sympathetic” towards the accused.
The Court of Appeal increased the prison sentence for the woman, identified only as Shy to protect her identity, from the six and a half years imposed by the Johor Bahru High Court to 12 years, Free Malaysia Today news portal reported on Tuesday.
Evrol Mariette Peters, one of the three judges in the panel, said in the grounds for judgment that the state court had placed too much emphasis on Shy’s age while failing to give sufficient weight to the seriousness of her actions.
Shy was 19 at the time of the incident.
According to court papers, she and her then boyfriend, 29, checked into a hotel near Jalan Austin Heights in Johor Bahru on September 20, 2022. The couple had been going out for about a year.
In the room, Shy’s boyfriend asked for sex but she refused, saying she was menstruating. The boyfriend pulled out a knife and threatened her with it.
She fought to take the weapon away from him and, in the struggle, stabbed him multiple times in the chest. An autopsy later found 28 stab wounds on his body.
Upon her surrender, Shy was initially charged with murder. However, this was later amended to culpable homicide not amounting to murder after her lawyer made representations to the court.
Shy pleaded guilty to the lesser charge and was sentenced to six and a half years’ jail. The prosecution appealed the sentence.
The appellate court agreed with the prosecution, saying that the sentence did not take into account the seriousness of the crime.
Peters said the high court had erred in treating Shy’s loss of young defender status as a mitigating factor. As she was 22 when convicted, she had aged out of the statutory limit of 21.
The high court had also taken into account the struggle. “This was not a single impulsive stab. The multiple injuries demonstrate a sustained violent attack,” Peters said.
While acknowledging Shy’s youth, guilty plea, remorse, lack of previous convictions and psychiatric condition as mitigating factors, Peters 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 man’s life.
“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,” the judge said, referring to a character in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
Twelve years was proportionate and necessary in the public interest, the court ruled, with the sentence to take effect from the date of Shy’s arrest. The maximum sentence for culpable homicide is 30 years.


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An appeal court nearly doubled the woman’s jail term, calling the initial sentence ‘over-sympathetic’


An appeal court nearly doubled the woman’s jail term, calling the initial sentence ‘over-sympathetic’.


Crime

Malaysian woman who stabbed boyfriend to death over sex demand gets 12 years

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}An appeal court nearly doubled the woman’s jail term, calling the initial sentence ‘over-sympathetic’

An appeal court nearly doubled the woman’s jail term, calling the initial sentence ‘over-sympathetic’