Singapore — Despite his execution date being less than a day away, the execution of a Malaysian drug trafficker was stayed on Tuesday (Nov 9) by the Court of Appeal, after he tested positive for COVID-19.
On Monday (Nov 8) night, a High Court judge dismissed a last-minute court application against the death sentence of 33-year-old Nagaenthran Dharmalingam. His lawyer M Ravi filed a court application before Justice See Kee Oon, which was heard in chambers and without access to the media.
Mr Ravi’s application was based on Nagaenthran purportedly possessing the mental age of someone below 18, Justice See said in his oral remarks. Mr Ravi argued that judicial mercy should be exercised to grant Nagaenthran a reprieve from the execution of the death sentence and that further psychiatric examinations should be conducted on his mental state.
In his remarks, Justice See said that “there is no credible basis” for Mr Ravi’s assertions for Nagaenthran’s mental age and noted that Nagaenthran was found by the trial judge not to be suffering from any degree of intellectual disability, even though it was accepted that he had borderline intellectual functioning.
He also added that “Mr Ravi has only met the plaintiff once in the last three years, for a mere 26 minutes in all from 9:20 am to 9:46 am on Nov 2, 2021”.
“I reiterate that the plaintiff has been accorded due process in accordance with the law. It is not open to him to challenge the court’s findings pertaining to his mental responsibility, whether directly or indirectly, in yet another attempt to revisit and unravel the finality of those findings,” added Justice See.
After Nagaenthran was taken away, a judge informed the court that Nagaenthran had tested positive for Covid-19.
Justice Andrew Phang, who appeared with fellow judges Judith Prakash and Kannan Ramesh, said “this is rather unexpected”. He said the court was of the view that it was not appropriate to proceed, “given the circumstances”.
“The execution is scheduled for tomorrow,” said Justice Phang. “… If the applicant has been afflicted by COVID-19… it’s our view that the execution cannot take place anyway.” /TISG
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