PUTRAJAYA, Dec 3 — The Federal Court today reduced the prison sentence of a former information technology employee to 12 years for causing the death of a bank manager during a 2019 road rage incident on the southbound North-South Expressway.

A three-member panel chaired by Federal Court judge Datuk Nordin Hassan reduced the jail term after allowing Yew Wei Liang’s appeal to reduce the 16-year jail term imposed on him earlier.

Yew was ordered to serve the jail sentence from the date of his arrest, which was August 10, 2019.

However, the panel dismissed Yew’s appeal against his conviction for causing the death of Syed Muhammad Danial Syed Shakir.

Justice Nordin said there was no error in the Court of Appeal’s decision, noting that there was no basis for the Federal Court to disturb the appellate court’s decision.

“We find that the sentence imposed is a bit high, so we reduce the sentence from 16 years to 12 years,” he said.

Sitting with him were Justices Datuk Seri Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera and Datuk Lee Swee Seng.

Yew, 47, had sought for his conviction to be substituted with one under Section 304(b) for culpable homicide not amounting to murder without intention to cause death, which carries a maximum of 10 years’ jail, a fine, or both.

Meanwhile, the prosecution filed a cross-appeal seeking to substitute the conviction with murder under Section 302 of the Penal Code.

Yew was originally charged in 2019 with murdering Syed Muhammad Danial, 29, at Kilometre 293.6 of the PLUS Highway (Kuala Lumpur–Seremban) between 1pm and 2pm on August 10, 2019.

In 2023, the Shah Alam High Court convicted him of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304(a) of the Penal Code and sentenced him to 16 years in prison. The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction and sentence in March this year.

During today’s proceedings, Deputy Public Prosecutor Ng Siew Wee argued that evidence conclusively showed that Yew intended to cause bodily injury to the deceased.

She said Yew had driven his car forward, striking the deceased, who was fleeing, and then ran over the victim, adding that the act was not accidental.

Yew’s lawyer, Datuk N. Sivananthan, submitted that the 16-year term was grossly excessive.

Citing the appellate court’s findings, he said that based on the video of the incident, it showed Yew attempting to leave by reversing his car when the deceased retrieved a baseball bat from his vehicle and struck Yew’s car repeatedly — an act the Court of Appeal concluded amounted to provocation capable of triggering sudden and intense anger, leading to a loss of self-control.

Met by the media after the proceedings, Sivananthan, assisted by lawyer Nabila Habib, said that with the reduced sentence, Yew is expected to be released from Kajang Prison in 2027. — Bernama