SINGAPORE — Malaysia's parliament this week abolished the mandatory death penalty as part of sweeping legal reforms.

Other key changes include the removal of capital punishment as a sentencing option for some serious crimes that do not cause death, such as discharging and trafficking of a firearm and kidnapping.

Natural life prison sentences are also being abolished in the country.

Malaysia has had a moratorium on executions since 2018, when it first promised to abolish capital punishment entirely.

While the move on Monday (April 3) was cautiously welcomed by rights groups, what does it likely mean for crime rates in Malaysia, and what are the implications for Singapore and the region?

Will Singapore face any pressure to follow suit? 

TODAY put these questions to legal and foreign relations experts. 

WHAT DOES THIS MOVE MEAN? 

Singapore Management University (SMU) associate professor of law Eugene Tan said that there are generally two types of death penalty regimes: The mandatory death penalty and the discretionary death penalty. 

“The mandatory death penalty means that if you are convicted of a crime that attracts the death penalty, the judge has no discretion but to sentence you to death,” he said. 

“The discretionary death penalty means that the death penalty still exists for such a crime, but the court has the discretion to decide, given the facts of the case, whether an accused person should be sentenced to death.”

Assoc Prof Tan added that the abolition of the mandatory death penalty means that Malaysia still has in place the discretionary death penalty.

The move this week should not be confused with abolishing the death penalty altogether, he added. 

“Malaysia still has the death penalty, and so do we (Singapore). The abolition of the mandatory death penalty… may have given the mistaken impression that there is no more death penalty across the Causeway.”

However, the initial intention of the current Malaysian Government was to do away with the death penalty altogether, said Malaysian political experts. 

The push to abolish the mandatory death penalty started shortly after Malaysia’s Pakatan Haparan (PH) government came into power in 2018, said Dr Ong Kian Ming, former Malaysian Member of Parliament and former deputy minister of international trade and industry.

PH had initially wanted to abolish the death penalty in totality, but this initial plan sparked opposition from murder victims' families and opposition politicians.

This agenda was then amended in 2019 to abolish just the mandatory death penalty, before this step was finally passed on Monday with a two-thirds majority in Parliament.

WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS OF THIS MOVE FOR CRIME RATES? 

According to legal experts, the implications of this move on crime rates in Malaysia are not clear.

This is simply because there is little or no data on what happens in jurisdictions which remove only the mandatory death penalty, and not the death penalty altogether, if indeed any other jurisdictions have done this. 

Law lecturer Alexander Woon of the Singapore University of Social Sciences said that most of the research on the effectiveness of the death penalty studies countries that have abolished the death penalty altogether. 

For instance, a 2018 report by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, a United States-based human rights organisation, examined murder rates in 11 countries that had abolished the death penalty, and found that 10 of those countries saw a decline in murder rates in the decade that followed. 

However, Malaysia’s move to remove its mandatory death penalty, and not all instances of capital punishment, appears to set a precedent. 

“The effect of the mandatory versus the discretionary death penalty, I have never heard of anyone doing such a (thing), because as far as I know, no jurisdiction has ever done that,” he said. 

However, Mr Woon said that “in theory”, there should be no change in crime rates in general when the mandatory death penalty is removed, especially for crimes that still attract the death penalty such as drug trafficking and murder.

“From a criminal’s perspective, it is not that they are certain that they are going to get the death penalty,” said Mr Woon.

“Even in a mandatory death penalty environment, the reason that people sometimes commit crimes anyway is because they think they won’t be caught.” 

He added that even without the mandatory death penalty, the risk of death still looms large, and hence a potential offender’s risk assessment when carrying out the crime will not change significantly. 

In the same vein, he added that it is not known if crime rates in Singapore, especially those involving drug trafficking offenders from Malaysia, will see any significant changes in the light of this policy shift.

“Theoretically, it shouldn’t (have an effect on Singapore), because the law in Singapore remains the same, and if caught in Singapore they are punished under Singapore law, and not Malaysian law,” Mr Woon said.

“(But) we really don’t know if this will embolden drug syndicates in the region, who knows?” 

He added that in general, criminals react to situations in unpredictable ways, and thus it is hard to know whether Singapore will perhaps see a change in crime rates or not. 

“People don’t always react in predictable and rational ways, so the answer is that we don’t know,” he said. 

Agreeing, former Malaysia deputy minister Dr Ong, who is also now a senior visiting fellow at Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, told TODAY that the move by Malaysia would be a "useful case study" for other countries in the region.

"Over time, it would also be helpful to examine the evidence on whether the removal of the mandatory death penalty will lead to a rise in drug trafficking offences which no longer carry a mandatory death sentence," he added.

WILL THIS LEAD TO INCREASED PRESSURE FOR SINGAPORE TO FOLLOW SUIT? 

Singapore made some changes to the law relating to capital punishment in 2012.

For example, the Misuse of Drugs Act was amended so that the mandatory death penalty would no longer apply if two specific conditions are both met.

First, if the trafficker was only a courier and had no role in the supply or distribution of the drugs.

Second, if the first condition is met, the court has discretion in sentencing if the courier cooperated substantively with the authorities or had a mental disability substantially impairing his appreciation of the act's gravity.

The same year, the law relating to sentencing for murder convictions was  amended so that the mandatory death penalty would not apply if the killing was not intentional.

In terms of Malaysia's move this week, experts said that in the short to medium term, it is highly unlikely that it will impact Singapore-Malaysia relations or affect Singapore’s stance on capital punishment. 

Dr Ong said that matters involving the mandatory death penalty will likely not have any immediate effect on bilateral ties “based on the long-established understanding of sovereignty and non-interference between the two countries and also within Asean countries”. 

However, he added that such bilateral understanding does not prevent activists in Malaysia from “putting pressure on the Malaysian and Singaporean Government to appeal on behalf of certain Malaysians who are on death row in Singapore”. 

For example, in the lead up to the execution of Malaysian drug trafficker Nagaenthran Dharmalingam last year, Malaysian politicians and even Malaysia’s King had written to Singapore, appealing for clemency. 

Assoc Prof Tan said that there is a chance that such appeals from Malaysia might get stronger in time to come, should Malaysians be charged in Singapore with offences that carry the mandatory death penalty. 

“The domestic expectation (in Malaysia) could be that when a similar crime is committed in Malaysia, that this person may not be sentenced to death,” he said. 

However, it is highly unlikely that Singapore would bow to such international pressure. 

“In most cases, if not all, (Singapore) has never budged,” he said. 

Agreeing, Mr Bilahari Kausikan, a former permanent secretary of Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that he knows of "no case where any credible country, company or organisation has refused to deal with us because of our stance on capital punishment".

"If we are going to change our position on capital punishment, it must be because the majority of Singaporeans want it abolished and not because foreigners demand it for reasons that often have nothing to do with the issue," he said.