Malaysian on death row in Singapore granted eleventh-hour stay of execution

SINGAPORE: Less than 24 hours before he was due to face the gallows, Sarawakian Kho Jabing was granted a stay of execution on Thursday morning (Nov 5) by the Court of Appeal, after his lawyer filed a last-minute motion on Wednesday.

Kho's execution, originally scheduled for Friday morning, has been postponed, pending the hearing of the case before the Court of Appeal.

The temporary reprieve will allow the 31-year-old’s newly appointed lawyer Mr Chandra Mohan K Nair, who was briefed by Kho’s family on Tuesday, more time to prepare Kho’s case. The prosecution has objected to the stay of execution, telling the court that the motion did not raise any arguable issues.

Kho and an accomplice, Galing Kujat, were convicted of murder in 2010 and sentenced to hang. On appeal in 2011, Kujat escaped the gallows when his conviction of murder was substituted with a conviction of robbery with hurt. He was sentenced to 18.5 years’ jail with 19 strokes of the cane. Kho’s appeal failed.

However, the law was changed in 2013 to abolish the mandatory death penalty in certain categories of murder and allow judges the discretion to sentence an accused to life imprisonment and caning instead. On re-sentencing, Kho was handed down a sentence of life imprisonment with 24 strokes of the cane.

The prosecution appealed, urging the Court of Appeal to reverse the re-sentencing judge’s decision and impose again a death sentence on Kho, arguing that his attack on the victim was “extremely vicious”.

Kho and Kujat had attacked Cao Ruyin and another man in February 2008, intending to rob the duo. Kho used a tree branch to strike Mr Cao on the head, causing him to “sustain life-threatening injuries to his head and brain”, a forensic pathologist said at their trial. Mr Cao sustained 14 skull fractures and swelling of the brain. He died of his injuries six days after the attack.

In January this year, the five-judge Court of Appeal sent Kho back to face the gallows in a split 3-2 decision. “At the very heart of this appeal lies a criminal legal question – for an offence of murder where the mandatory death penalty does not apply, in what circumstances would the death penalty still be warranted?”, Judge of Appeal Chao Hick Tin wrote in his judgment for the majority.

Kho's appeal for clemency was rejected last month by President Tony Tan Keng Yam.

A date has yet to be fixed for the court to hear Kho’s case.