A three-member bench, chaired by Rohana Yusuf, ruled that there was no appealable error by the trial judge in the High Court two years ago to warrant an intervention.

“The judge had perused all evidence presented by the prosecution to show that the accused had the intention to commit murder,” said Rohana, who sat with Vernon Ong Lam Kiat and Hasnah Mohammad Hashim.

Deputy public prosecutor Nazran Mohd Sham, during submission, concluded that the act of Mohamad Awari Ahmad was “brutal, aggressive and vicious”.

“The crime was never an accident and the trial judge did not commit any error in law and fact to have the charge reduced,” he said.

Nazran said the court also accepted Yashmin Fauzi’s dying declaration as evidence and the testimony of her teenage son.

Defence lawyer Ahmad Nizam Mohamad said the prosecution did not prove intention for murder. He argued that the accused should have instead been charged with and convicted of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

The then judicial commissioner Ahmad Bache, who sat in the High Court in Kota Bharu, sentenced Awari to death after he was found guilty of murdering Yashmin at her home in Kampung Batu Papan, near Gua Musang, between 12.30am and 2am on March 1, 2015.

Ahmad also sentenced the accused to 18 years’ jail and ordered him to be given 12 strokes of the rotan for raping the woman, a mother of three, at the same place and time.

Ahmad, in his judgment, said it was clear that the accused had the intention to murder Yashmin by attacking her with the parang repeatedly.

“In the beginning, he only brought a piece of wood but later decided to take the parang from the victim’s house,” the trial judge had said.

The incident was also witnessed by the victim’s son, then aged five, who saw his mother being slashed on the neck and raped.

The other two children, aged three years and six months, were asleep.

Facts of the case revealed that Yashmin, 25, and the accused were family friends.

On the fateful day, the accused broke into the house with the initial aim of committing robbery.

Awari then slashed the victim’s neck twice and inflicted other bodily injuries.

As she was gasping for breath, the accused also raped her before escaping with RM200 and the victim’s mobile phone.

The semi-nude Yashmin then crawled out of the house and was found unconscious by her husband, an auxiliary policeman, who returned from duty at 2am.

The policeman then sought help from his father, who was living nearby, before rushing Yashmin to the Gua Musang district hospital, where she died at 6.30am.

Before her last breath, Yashmin managed to write a note identifying her assailant.

Investigations also revealed that Awari went to a restaurant and was drunk after consuming seven bottles of beer.

Yasmin’s son also recognised Awari during an eye-witness parade.