JUDGMENT

Gill CJ (delivering judgement of the Court):

The appellant was convicted on a charge of murder under s. 302 of the Penal Code at the High Court, Kuantan on 20 February 1974 and sentenced to death. We allowed his appeal and quashed the conviction and sentence. We now give our reasons for doing so.

We regret having to make a general observation that in our view the presentation of the case by the prosecution was poor. There were several grounds of appeal with a lot of justification for complaint behind them.

Now the trial Judge had indicated to the jury that there was "no direct evidence in the sense that the prosecution have not produced witnesses to say they saw someone attacking the deceased. But in law a fact can be proved by indirect evidence or circumstantial evidence which can show who was the person who did it." The only other time he mentioned circumstantial evidence was in these terms: "Although there is no direct evidence, I think there is circumstantial evidence - and it is said that circumstantial evidence can have the accuracy of mathematics."

In our view, with respect to the trial Judge, such direction to the jury seems inadequate. He was referred to Karam