The Court of Appeal in Putrajaya allowed the appeal of Al Bakhtiar bin Ab Samat on 5 March 2012, setting aside his conviction and death sentence for trafficking 993.8 grams of cannabis.[1] The court ordered him acquitted and discharged on the trafficking charge.[1]
The 2006 arrest and the room
On 8 July 2006 at about 8.30 p.m., police on a crime-prevention round stopped Bakhtiar, then a 32-year-old contractor, as he approached on a motorcycle at Kampung Jati.[1][2] A body search found a small black pouch in his right jeans pocket holding five plastic packets of plant material later confirmed as 30.4 grams of cannabis, for which he was separately charged with possession.[1] Taken to the Kuala Pilah police station and questioned, he led officers to house No. 19A at Kampung Parit Seberang, where his adopted sister, mother and grandmother were present, and showed them a closed room that smelled strongly of ganja.[1] Officers recovered dried plant material from the room, later confirmed as 993.8 grams of cannabis.[1]
The Seremban High Court convicted him of trafficking and sentenced him to death on 18 February 2010, adding three years’ prison and three strokes of the cane for the possession charge.[2][1] His defence was that the room was shared with at least two or three other people, including his uncle Kamil, a confirmed drug user, and that the police had ransacked it rather than being led there.[1]
Why the appeal succeeded
The Court of Appeal held the defence was not a bare denial and that the trial judge had never addressed the evidence of four defence witnesses.[1] It also ruled the judge wrongly used the earlier 30.4-gram find as similar-fact evidence of knowledge of the room’s drugs, and had made an unnecessary comment on the defence’s failure to call a police escort as a witness.[1]