CNN
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A Singapore court docket on Tuesday rejected a remaining enchantment by a person sentenced to loss of life for drug trafficking, following a marketing campaign by his legal professionals who stated the trial violated worldwide legal guidelines as the person has mental disabilities.
The ruling ends all authorized avenues to cease his execution and supporters say he might 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 underneath scrutiny.
Nagaenthran Okay 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 legal professionals to start out judicial evaluate proceedings to halt the loss of life sentence.
“The Court of Appeal has just dismissed the application and considered the appeal an abuse of process and that international law does not apply. Nagaenthran who is mentally disabled is due to be hanged possibly in the next few days,” stated M. Ravi, who was a part of Dharmalingam’s authorized group, in a Facebook put up Tuesday.
In his ruling, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon stated there was “no admissible evidence showing any decline in the appellant’s mental condition after the commission of the offense.”
“The case mounted by the appellant’s counsel was baseless and without merit, both as a matter of fact and of law,” Menon stated, in accordance with court docket paperwork.
The court docket additionally dismissed a request for Dharmalingam to be assessed by an unbiased panel of psychiatrists.
After his household have been notified of his impending execution in October 2021, Dharmalingam’s legal professionals launched a last-minute constitutional problem. The High Court dismissed their bid in November however granted a keep of execution so the choice might be appealed.
That enchantment listening to was then postponed as a result of Dharmalingam contracted Covid-19. Tuesday’s verdict on the enchantment exhausts Dharmalingam’s authorized choices.
Anti-death penalty group Reprieve stated Dharmalingam is going through imminent execution except he’s pardoned by Singapore’s President Halimah Yacob.
“We are extremely concerned about rushed hearings and decisions in this case, in violation of Nagaenthran’s fair trial rights. Nagaenthran should be protected from the death penalty because of his intellectual disability,” Reprieve director Maya Foa stated in an announcement.
“The heart-wrenching fact that he believes he is going home to his family and talks about sharing home-cooked meals with them shows that he does not fully understand he faces execution and lacks the mental competency to be executed.”
Singapore has a number of the strictest drug legal guidelines on the planet.
Trafficking a specific amount of medicine – for instance, 15 grams (0.5 ounces) of heroin – ends in a compulsory loss of life sentence underneath the Misuse of Drugs Act. It was solely lately – 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 legal professionals argued he mustn’t have been sentenced to loss of life underneath 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 legal professionals stated.
“He has not a very good sense of what is happening around him,” N. Surendran, a Malaysian lawyer who’s representing Dharmalingam’s household, and adviser to Malaysian NGO Lawyers for Liberty, stated in November. “He is disoriented. He’s got no real clue of what is going to happen to him.”
Surendran stated executing Dharmalingam “would be tantamount to executing a child.”
The court docket on Tuesday, nevertheless, stated there was no admissible proof exhibiting any decline in Dharmalingam’s psychological situation.
The decide dominated the legal professionals’ assertions of Dharmalingam’s psychological decline have been “self-serving” and “not supported by anything at all.” Menon, the chief justice, stated the protection proceedings have been carried in a means supposed to delay the execution, in accordance with court docket paperwork.
In January, rights group Amnesty International known as the trial “a travesty of justice” and “unlawful under international law.”
“This includes the fact his sentence was imposed as a mandatory punishment and for an offense that does not meet the threshold of the ‘most serious crimes’ to which the use of the death penalty must be restricted under international law,” Amnesty stated.
