I recently went down for a hearing in Johor Bahru High Court for a criminal matter. It was to examine a witness. The examination was not expected to take long; half an hour, three quarters, at most. A loose thread to sew back into the record of appeal. Before my trip down in the evening, I attended an intense physical hearing in the appellate court in the morning, which left me dazed and numb sometime …
My colleague said this to me the other day after we completed an online case management. Over the last few case managements he attended alone, he could not prevent applications that were filed after ours from being heard first despite our application being filed earlier and dealing with a threshold issue of the case. His exasperated remark was true. What I said and asked for was in substance exactly what he had said and asked …
While hanging about the Jalan Raja criminal magistrates in the afternoon in my second year of practice, a friend introduced me to a senior-looking lawyer. He was a Malay man in his late 50s or early 60s. He was a former prosecuting officer (PO) who now swung for the defence. He was not a deputy public prosecutor (DPP). Back then, police officers with the rank of Inspector could and would carry out prosecutions in the …
As a lawyer, I am fortunate my father is a lawyer too. In terms of age, we’re a generation apart. That means he has thirty years of lived experience ahead of me. That also means he has close to twenty years worth of legal practice experience ahead of me. He was called on 29.11.1979. I was called on 6.8.1999. That’s 19 years, 8 months and 8 days. But hey, who’s counting? The best thing about …
My own behaviour baffles me. For I find myself not doing what I really want to do but doing what I really loathe. Yet sure if I do things that I really don’t want to do, it cannot be said that ‘I’ am doing them at all – it must be sin that has made its home in my nature. St Paul’s letter to the Romans [Rom. VII.14ff, Phillips translation] Whenever I am gripped by …