SEPTEMBER 10 — Newly appointed Attorney-General (AG) Datuk Ahmad Terrirudin Mohd Salleh said the prosecution’s duty isn’t to ensure that any of the accused are convicted at all costs.

"Instead, it is to ensure that the law is upheld based on Blackstone’s Ratio where ‘it is better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer’,” he reportedly said.

It reminds me of what a former Senior Crown Prosecutor of New South Wales, Australia wrote 65 years ago that it behoved a prosecutor "neither to indict, nor on trial to speak for conviction except upon credible evidence of guilt; nor to do even a little wrong for the sake of expediency, or to pique any person or please any power; not to be either gullible or suspicious, intolerant or over-pliant: in the firm and abiding mind to do right to all manner of people, to seek justice with care, understanding and good countenance.” [RR Kidston QC, "The Office of Crown Prosecutor (More Particularly in New South Wales)”, (1958) 32 ALJ 148)]

Four years earlier, Justice Rand in the Supreme Court of Canada had also said that the purpose of a criminal prosecution "is not to obtain a conviction; it is to lay before the court what the prosecution considers to be credible evidence relevant to what is alleged to be a crime. A prosecutor has a duty to see that all available legal proof of the facts is presented: it should be done firmly and pressed to its legitimate strength, but it must also be done fairly.”

The role of the prosecutor excludes any notion of winning or losing; his function is a matter of public duty. It is to be efficiently performed with an ingrained sense of the dignity, the seriousness and the justness of judicial proceedings. [Rand J in the Supreme Court of Canada in Boucher v The Queen (1954) 110 CCC 263 at p 270]

It is expected that the prosecutor will act with fairness and detachment and always with the objectives of establishing the whole truth in accordance with the procedures and standards which the law requires to be observed and of helping to ensure that the accused’s trial is a fair one.

A properly functioning criminal justice system is essential to the maintenance of law and order in a country. This requires fair and effective prosecution.

The AG and his team of prosecutors have the primary duty to uphold the rule of law, the integrity of the criminal justice system and the right to a fair trial, seeking justice within the bounds of the law, not merely to convict. (See The Code for Crown Prosecutors issued by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) under Section 10 of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, UK)

Let’s recall, again, that in 1990, the Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders adopted the Guidelines on the Role of Prosecutors which were formulated to assist Member States in their tasks of securing and promoting the effectiveness, impartiality and fairness of prosecutors in criminal proceedings.

On the role of prosecutors in criminal proceedings, Guideline No. 13 states as follows:

In the performance of their duties, prosecutors shall:

(a) carry out their functions impartially and avoid all political, social, religious, racial, cultural, sexual or any other kind of discrimination;

(b) protect the public interest, act with objectivity, take proper account of the position of the suspect and the victim, and pay attention to all relevant circumstances, irrespective of whether they are to the advantage or disadvantage of the suspect.

*This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.