A three-member Court of Appeal bench chaired by Justice Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim today set aside the 30-year jail term of S Gobi, Yusoff Muhammad, and Nor Shahida Abdul Razak but ordered them to enter their defence in the High Court before the same trial judge.
Zaidi, who sat with Justices Azman Abdullah and Noorin Badaruddin, fixed April 15 for the trio to appear before Justice Chan Jit Lee.
At the outset of today’s proceeding, lawyer K Simon Murali, representing Yusoff, informed the court that all three accused had taken the common ground that their guilty plea was qualified.
He said both the prosecution and the defence had agreed to a consent order to set aside their conviction and sentence.
He said the case was to be remitted to the High Court for the defence stage of the trial.
Azman then asked Simon why the trio’s plea was deemed involuntary.
Simon said Yusoff had filed an affidavit stating that a court-appointed lawyer who represented him in the High Court had pressured and induced him to plead guilty.
According to the affidavit, the lawyer allegedly told Yusoff that he would face the death penalty if found guilty at the end of the defence case, but would receive a jail term if he pleaded guilty.
Deputy public prosecutor Fuad Abdul Razak confirmed the matter and did not object.
The predicament of the three arose from the fact that, at the time they were charged, trafficking carried the mandatory death penalty. By the time their defence stage arrived, the law had been amended to give judges the discretion to impose either the death penalty or a jail term.
They pleaded guilty without putting forward their defence on Aug 14, 2023.
They were jointly charged with trafficking the drug at the Al-Wustha mosque in Guar Chempedak, Yan district, Kedah, at about 11.30pm on Sept 26, 2018.
Gobi, 47, Yusoff, 39, and Shahida, 38, were sentenced to 30 years in jail, effective Sept 27, 2018.
The two men were also ordered to be given 12 strokes of the rotan, as they were below 50 years of age, while Shahida, as a woman, was exempted under the law.
All three filed an appeal against the sentence.
Lawyer Zulzarif Zakuan represented Gobi while Ali Munawir Razak appeared for Shahida.