APRIL 1 — Amirul Hafiz Omar ost his life on the road this week in an entirely preventable manner. 

A man in his thirties who worked two jobs to support his family, he leaves behind three young children. 

The driver, reportedly under the influence of alcohol and drugs, crossed into the opposite lane and collided with Amirul’s motorcycle. 

This profound tragedy has rightly drawn an immediate, grief-stricken response from the Malaysian public.  

At the centre of all this is a life that has been lost and a family that must now live with that absence. No legal outcome can undo or substitute that loss.

But it is in tragedies like this that we must resist the pull of immediate, instinctive responses and remain measured in our thinking about justice.

Sustainability of a murder charge

The driver has been charged with self-administration of drugs and with murder today. He has already pleaded guilty to the drug use charge. 

The decision to pursue a murder charge, on the other hand, raises several questions. These are not abstract questions, for they go to how justice is delivered to families like Amirul’s. 

Being fair to the family also means ensuring that the charges brought are sound, sustainable and capable of being seen through to the end. How will the prosecution establish the requisite elements of murder in this instance? 

Will it rely on section 300(d) of the Penal Code to do so? If the charge cannot be sustained, will it fall back into culpable homicide not amounting to murder, or if not, the default offence under section 41(1) of the Road Transport Act 1987? 

Or will the family be left to endure a protracted process of appeals, should the murder charge fail, which would stretch on for years in pursuit of a murder conviction?

If the charge is sustained, what does that mean for section 41(1) of the Road Transport Act 1987, which already provides for the offence of fatal, dangerous or reckless driving? 

More broadly, what does this mean for the families of victims in earlier cases, where charges under section 41(1) were brought instead of murder?

These questions may or may not become clearer in time, but taken as they stand, they raise a legitimate concern as to whether this case is being approached in a considered and principled manner, or in a way that appears to respond to immediate public outrage at the potential expense of clarity and certainty for the family.

We owe Amirul’s family a measure of closure, and that requires a charge that can be sustained to its conclusion, rather than one that risks reopening old wounds. 

Harsh penalties as a panacea for all social ills

The instinct to call for accountability through law is deeply human. While such calls are an understandable reaction from a grieving family and the public, it is striking and concerning when demands for the harshest possible punishments, including the death penalty for drunk drivers, are echoed by those entrusted with crafting, understanding and upholding the law.

What we know of the case so far suggests that we are not dealing with a singular problem. Instead, we are witnessing a convergence of unresolved systemic issues: drink driving, potential drug addiction, reckless behaviour and the weak enforcement of existing traffic laws all collapsed into one irreversible moment. 

These are not new issues, nor are they beyond the awareness of those lawmakers and politicians. Yet, when responses to such tragedies continue to centre on calls for the harshest punishments, the burden of resolving these issues is essentially placed on a criminal justice system that was never designed to address them, while allowing those responsible for tackling these systemic failures to step back from that responsibility. 

Criminal law rightfully assigns blame and imposes consequences after the fact. What it cannot reliably do is shape behaviour in the moment decisions are made. 

We must therefore ask: how much does the threat of the law actually deter the kind of conduct that leads to harm?

Knee-jerk calls for someone to be hanged rest entirely on Classical Deterrence Theory, an outdated assumption that potential criminals are rational actors who coolly calculate the costs and benefits of their actions before committing a crime. 

This strict rational-choice model fails to reflect the reality of human decision-making. In this case, where the accused pleaded guilty to the drug charge, we may never fully understand what led to the consumption of alcohol and drugs or how these substances shaped his decision to drive while intoxicated, until and unless such evidence emerges in the course of the murder trial.

Drunk driving is fundamentally an issue shaped by habit, environment and a clouded-over confidence that tragedy will only happen to someone else. 

An intoxicated driver is operating under a “hot” affective state where severe impairment entirely overrides any “cool” cognitive risk calculation. 

In this case, the possibility of a death penalty only arose because the charge was framed as murder after the incident. It is therefore unclear whether the threat of execution could have been a deterrent at the time the accused made the decision, and whether it would be meaningful in future cases. 

Either way, the approach of using harsh punishments as a form of deterrence is always a gamble. Its true effect may only become apparent over time, and that raises a difficult question: how many more lives must be lost before we can say with confidence that such an approach works?

From experience working on death penalty cases, we can say with confidence that the empirical evidence in relation to more serious crimes overwhelmingly supports this reality: the death penalty does not uniquely deter crime.

If extreme punishments fail to solve the underlying problem, we must understand why they remain so heavily demanded. Capital punishment functions as an incredibly convenient, legitimised tool of penal populism. 

It allows governments to project a “tough-on-crime” image while completely washing their hands of responsibility for addressing the root causes of systemic dysfunction. 

Relying on state-sanctioned violence offers an illusion that justice is being served and societal order is restored. 

We owe it to Amirul’s family and to others who may find themselves in the same unfortunate position to be honest about what this approach can and cannot achieve.

Strengthen preventive and compensatory measures

If we are serious about doing justice to Amirul’s family and preventing another family from experiencing the same loss, our focus must broaden far beyond hanging someone. 

True prevention requires a commitment to addressing the conditions that make these tragedies possible. 

We must prioritise consistent, visible enforcement of existing traffic laws to deter reckless behaviour before it escalates into a fatality. We must invest in safer, more accessible public infrastructure, ensuring that driving is not the only option for those who are intoxicated. 

Society must begin treating substance use and addiction not merely as moral failings or criminal acts, but as public health crises that demand harm reduction-led policies, accessible mental health services and sustainable social safety nets.

None of these systemic reforms is as immediate or as emotionally satisfying as calling for an execution. Yet, they represent the only environment where true prevention actually happens. 

In the meantime, Amirul’s widow or estate has signalled its intent to seek monetary compensation in the civil courts. It should not be this difficult for families to find a measure of justice that allows them to move forward. 

This is where more structured approaches to victim compensation deserve serious attention, as the burden of seeking redress should not continue to fall on grieving families.

A man has died in a deeply tragic way, leaving a fractured family in his wake. The most honourable and serious way to respect Amirul’s life is to refuse easy answers and simplistic solutions. 

Justice cannot end with a conversation about punishing the offender; it must demand that we confront the realities of human behaviour and actively dismantle the societal conditions that enabled this tragedy.

* Michelle Liu is a criminal defence lawyer based in Selangor and a fellow at an international non-profit focused on criminal justice reform.

** Jia Vern Tham leads research at HAYAT, a Kuala Lumpur-based organisation committed to advocating for rehabilitative and restorative justice, with a focus on decarceration, drug policy reform, and the total abolition of the death penalty.

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