Trial judge in SRC case not biased, Court of Appeal told

PUTRAJAYA: Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak was not put at a disadvantage in his SRC International Sdn Bhd’s trial when the Kuala Lumpur High Court Judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali provided only key points when he ordered the former premier to enter his defence, the Court of Appeal was told on Thursday.

Ad hoc prosecutor Datuk V. Sithambaram explained that under the law, a trial judge was not required to give a reason in his oral ruling when he found the prosecution has established a prima case and then ordered the accused to enter a defence.

“The contention that the appellant (Najib) has been prejudiced for not being able to put up his defence properly or to submit on those missing reasons was without basis.

“It is submitted that a miscarriage of justice had not occurred since all the rules of procedure and evidence had been followed in this trial,” he said.

Sithambaram submitted this on Thursday before a three-member bench led by Judge Datuk Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil in the hearing of Najib’s appeal against his conviction and jail sentence for misappropriation of RM42 million in SRC International funds.

The other two judges on the bench were Datuk Has Zanah Mehat and Datuk Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera.

“My Lord, the task of the defence was to respond to the entire prosecution’s case and not to rebut prima facie findings of the trial judge,” Sithambaram said.

He stressed that calling for the defence of the accused based on an oral ruling was not a judgment.

“There is no such thing as two judgments, but only one when an accused is either acquitted or convicted of a criminal charge,” he said, adding that the defence position that the accused was denied a fair trial was a desperate argument.

Sithambaram said if the defence argument was accepted, no trial judge in future would give oral or written reasons to call for the defence of accused persons.

“In our case, the trial judge gave key points to order Najib to enter defence for all the charges, although he was not required to. It was a bonus for the defence to get some point for Najib to enter defence but yet they complain,” Sithambaram said adding that, as a lawyer, he would be happy to get some inkling why his client was asked to enter his defence.

He also said that the claim by the defence that judge Mohd Nazlan was biased in the trial was “totally unwarranted”.

“The summation of defence lead counsel Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, both inside and outside court, is that the judge was biased in handling the defence case. Meaning that the trial judge was biased in favour of the prosecution.

“My Lord, this is a very serious allegation. I am in support of the judgment demonstrating that those accusations against the judge are unwarranted from the evidence adduced. Totally unwarranted. There is no basis to say the judge was (acting as) ‘second prosecutor’ or hopelessly incompetent or demonstrated incompetence.