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The ruling ends all authorized avenues to cease his execution and supporters say he may very well be hanged inside days.
The case has drawn worldwide consideration — together with from the United Nations, Malaysia’s Prime Minister and British billionaire Richard Branson — and put the city-state’s zero-tolerance drug legal guidelines again beneath scrutiny.
Nagaenthran Ok Dharmalingam, a 34-year-old Malaysian citizen, was arrested in 2009 for bringing 42.7 grams (1.5 ounces) of heroin into Singapore. He was convicted and sentenced to loss of life in 2010.
He appealed on the idea of psychological incapacity and for his attorneys to begin judicial evaluate proceedings to halt the loss of life sentence.
“The Court docket of Attraction has simply dismissed the appliance and thought of the attraction an abuse of course of and that worldwide regulation doesn’t apply. Nagaenthran who’s mentally disabled is because of be hanged presumably within the subsequent few days,” stated M. Ravi, who was a part of Dharmalingam’s authorized workforce, in a Fb submit Tuesday.
In his ruling, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon stated there was “no admissible proof exhibiting any decline within the appellant’s psychological situation after the fee of the offense.”
“The case mounted by the appellant’s counsel was baseless and with out benefit, each as a matter of truth and of regulation,” Menon stated, in response to court docket paperwork.
The court docket additionally dismissed a request for Dharmalingam to be assessed by an impartial panel of psychiatrists.
That attraction listening to was then postponed as a result of Dharmalingam contracted Covid-19. Tuesday’s verdict on the attraction exhausts Dharmalingam’s authorized choices.
Anti-death penalty group Reprieve stated Dharmalingam is going through imminent execution until he’s pardoned by Singapore’s President Halimah Yacob.
“We’re extraordinarily involved about rushed hearings and choices on this case, in violation of Nagaenthran’s honest trial rights. Nagaenthran ought to be shielded from the loss of life penalty due to his mental incapacity,” Reprieve director Maya Foa stated in a press release.
“The guts-wrenching undeniable fact that he believes he’s going dwelling to his household and talks about sharing home-cooked meals with them reveals that he doesn’t absolutely perceive he faces execution and lacks the psychological competency to be executed.”
Demise sentence
Singapore has among the strictest drug legal guidelines on the planet.
Trafficking a certain quantity of medication — for instance, 15 grams (0.5 ounces) of heroin — leads to a compulsory loss of life sentence beneath the Misuse of Medication Act. It was solely not too long ago — and after Dharmalingam’s case started — that the regulation was amended to permit for a convicted individual to flee the loss of life penalty in sure circumstances.
Dharmalingam’s attorneys argued he shouldn’t have been sentenced to loss of life beneath Singaporean regulation as a result of he was incapable of understanding his actions.
They stated a psychologist assessed his IQ to be 69, which is internationally acknowledged as an mental incapacity. At his trial, the protection additionally argued he had extreme consideration deficit hyperactivity dysfunction (ADHD), borderline mental functioning, and extreme alcohol use dysfunction.
Dharmalingam has spent a decade on loss of life row and through that point his situation additional deteriorated, his attorneys stated.
“He has not an excellent sense of what’s occurring round him,” N. Surendran, a Malaysian lawyer who’s representing Dharmalingam’s household, and adviser to Malaysian NGO Attorneys for Liberty, stated in November. “He’s disoriented. He is bought no actual clue of what’s going to occur to him.”
Surendran stated executing Dharmalingam “can be tantamount to executing a toddler.”
The court docket on Tuesday, nevertheless, stated there was no admissible proof exhibiting any decline in Dharmalingam’s psychological situation.
The decide dominated the attorneys’ assertions of Dharmalingam’s psychological decline have been “self-serving” and “not supported by something in any respect.” Menon, the chief justice, stated the protection proceedings have been carried in a approach meant to delay the execution, in response to court docket paperwork.
“This consists of the very fact his sentence was imposed as a compulsory punishment and for an offense that doesn’t meet the edge of the ‘most critical crimes’ to which using the loss of life penalty have to be restricted beneath worldwide regulation,” Amnesty stated.
CNN’s Caitlin McGee contributed reporting.
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