Syed Iskandar Syed Jaafar Al Mahdzar said B Anand Nambiar could file a review in the Federal Court or a judicial review in a high court on grounds that keeping him in solitary confinement is a severe punishment.
“He could file a motion in the Federal Court that keeping him on the death row for a long time is harsh and an unusual sentence,” Syed Iskandar told FMT.
Last week, FMT reported on a video plea by Anand, 36, maintaining that he was innocent of the murder of Heng Pang Kiat on Feb 21, 2002, in Kluang, Johor, some two decades ago.
Anand, who is an inmate at the Pengkalan Chepa prison in Kelantan, was charged alongside three others under Section 302 of the Penal Code.
The four were sentenced to death by hanging. They were also separately sentenced to 20 years’ jail for attempting to murder Heng’s friend, Chong Chiew Nam. The Federal Court upheld the decision in 2015.
Syed Iskandar said Anand could also file for a judicial review and seek an order of mandamus to order the government to substitute the death penalty to a jail term.
He said lawyers from the Kelantan Bar could assist Anand to file the legal papers.
Syed Iskandar cited the case of Nigerian Michael Philip Spears, who escaped the gallows after the Pardons Board in 2017 commuted his death sentence to natural life imprisonment.
Spears, who spent 20 years in jail – the last 16 in solitary confinement – was convicted for murder.
The government did not contest the suit in the Federal Court after a Court of Appeal in 2016 ordered the Nigerian’s complaint be heard before a High Court judge.
Spears’ lawyer, Azreen Ahmad Rastom, then told FMT that the prisons authorities informed her that the Pardons Board had substituted the capital punishment to life imprisonment.
The Nigerian in his suit filed against the government, argued that his long detention and delay in carrying out the hanging was cruel, inhuman and a degrading punishment.
Then Court of Appeal judge Varghese George, who delivered the 19-page judgment, said being on death row did not deny Spears his constitutional rights.