KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 8 — Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s release on Monday from all 47 charges in his Yayasan Akalbudi trial sparked a heated debate, but public discussion seems to be mixed up on whether it was the attorney general or the High Court’s decision to discontinue the trial.
Mohamad Hafiz Hassan, a law lecturer at Multimedia University who teaches criminal procedure, said the public prosecutor is perfectly entitled under Article 145 to make the choice or decision to not further prosecute an accused person. “Legally, there’s no legal requirement which mandates that the AG provides reason before he can withdraw. But there are case laws which say after you withdraw, if you want a DNAA, that’s when you have to provide good grounds to justify the DNAA,” she said.Tiara Katrina said there are no written laws which state examples of situations where the AG would discontinue a trial, and there would also be no past court judgments analysing the prosecution’s reasons to discontinue the trial.
“So imagine a situation: a mother is charged with stealing a loaf of bread and there’s evidence to show she did that, but the reason she did that was because the child was starving and if she didn’t do that her child would die, there may be moral considerations, policy considerations not to prosecute her even though she’s technically guilty,” she said.
Hafiz said it is legally valid for the AG to drop the trial even when there is a prima facie case, noting that Section 254 states that the discontinuance of prosecution can be done at any stage of the trial before the court’s decision. When the AG decides to withdraw charges at different stages of trials such as the early stages or later after the prima facie stage, the reasons that the AG would take into account would be different, she said.