PUTRAJAYA: A former contractor's death penalty for murdering his three-year-old stepson has been commuted to 35 years in prison.
The Court of Appeal also ordered Khairul Izani Khairuddin, 36, also known as "Boy Tiger", to be given 12 strokes of the cane.
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He was ordered to serve the prison sentence from the date of his arrest on Nov 12, 2018.
A three-judge panel consisting Datuk Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera (now a Federal Court judge), Datuk Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim and Datuk Azmi Ariffin dismissed Khairul Izani's set aside the conviction for murdering the boy, Muhammad Qairil Aqmal Abdul Hakim.
However, the panel allowed Khairul Izani's appeal to set aside the death sentence and replace it with a prison sentence.
On Aug 26, 2022, the Klang High Court found Khairul Izani guilty of killing the child and sentenced him to death by hanging.
The offence was committed at a house at Jalan Bukit Indah 5, Taman Bukit Indah, Ampang, Selangor at 11am on Nov 8, 2018.
Ahmad Zaidi, when delivering the court's decision, said Khairul Izani failed to show that the High Court judge had erred in his findings when dismissing Khairul Izani's defence of mental insanity.
On the contrary, he said, there was evidence proving that Khairul Izani was sane during the incident as his wife had testified that her husband stopped beating the child after seeing bleeding from the victim's head and immediately took the victim to a clinic.
Ahmad Zaidi said the act of Khairul Izani lying to the doctor that the boy was injured when he fell in the bathroom was consistent with the behaviour of a sane person.
"We found that the trial judge cannot be said to be wrong in his finding that the accused's actions in beating the deceased happened because of his hot temper and not because he was mentally unsound," he said.
He said that based on the facts of the case, Khairul Izani's wife saw her husband beating the child repeatedly, stepping on him, strangling him and banging his head against the wall until the boy's head bled.
The woman did not succeed in stopping her husband from beating the child because she was heavily pregnant and also because Khairul Izani was a hot-tempered person, he said.
Khairul Izani was represented by lawyer Arik Zakri Abdul Kadir, while deputy public prosecutor Ng Siew Wee appeared for the prosecution. – Bernama
