Can you get away with murder in Msia if you have bipolar disorder?

By now, you’ve probably heard of the former medical student/part-time model who was charged with murdering her boyfriend. If not, A. Tamilselvi, 26, allegedly stabbed her boyfriend at the time, V. Gawsigan, also 26, in his left wrist, and left leg, with what was ‘believed to be a knife’ on 11 March.

In court, her lawyer asked for her to be sent to a psychiatric hospital for an evaluation, saying that she suffers from bipolar disorder which could’ve played a role in the incident. And at this point, you’re probably like, “Wah, just say I’m crazy then I can get away with murder ah?”.

Before we answer that though, we gotta know how the defence of insanity works, starting with the fact that…

Judge(s) decide whether you’re legally insane, not doctors

As is with many laws in Malaysia, we yoinked the rules for the defence of insanity from the UK, except we chose the very unsexy term of ‘unsoundness of mind’ instead. And if you check out section 84 of the Penal Code, you’ll see this:

Act of a person of unsound mind

84. Nothing is an offence which is done by a person who, at the time of doing it, by reason of unsoundness of mind, is incapable of knowing the nature of the act, or that he is doing what is either wrong or contrary to law.

You’ll notice that is the term unsoundness of mind isn’t really defined here, and that’s cuz the courts make the final decision on whether someone’s unsound of mind or not by taking into account medical reports, testimony from medical experts and the like.

Just to make things easier, we’ll be referring to the term as insanity moving forward.

Now, to successfully raise insanity as a defence for a crime, there are 3 elements to be satisfied:

• At the time crime was committed, the accused was insane
• The condition impaired the accused
• The impairment was so much so that the accused didn’t know the nature of his act (for example they might not even know they were holding a knife or a gun), didn’t know that what they were doing was wrong, and didn’t know that what they were doing was against the law

But all of that is if the person is fit to go to court at all. We won’t really get into the nitty gritty but if they’re insane to the point where they legit have no idea what’s going on and are deemed unable to stand trial, judges/the authorities will send them to a psych ward, basically.

Going back to the defence of insanity…

You don’t actually have to be straitjacket crazy to be legally insane

Most of y’all probably think of insanity in the sense of balls to the walls crazy, like Jack Torrence in The Shining or the protagonist of Fight Club, and you’d be partially right. There are less obvious cases of legal insanity, though, like if someone commits a crime because of a medical condition, and they don’t remember anything after.

Take for example the case of Sinnasamy v PP. This dude Sinnasamy claimed that he killed his daughter by accident in an epileptic episode, and yeah, doctors who got called to testify unanimously said that he couldn’t have been conscious during an epileptic attack.

Another one is the case of Kenneth Lee Fook Mun (who was Tun H.S. Lee’s grandson, by the way), where he shot and killed a lady he didn’t know at a petrol station. His lawyer(s) claimed that his low blood sugar caused him to lose consciousness at the same time as the killing, so he shouldn’t be responsible.

This sort of condition is bundled under the automatism (not autism) umbrella and yes, this does satisfy the requirements laid out in section 84 (mentioned above).

The thing is…

The courts are very strict in granting the insanity defence

Theoretically, you can raise the defence of insanity for any crime that requires mens rea (the intention and knowledge that you’re committing a crime). Punching someone, hitting a car from behind, you name it.

Realistically, however, it’s not that simple. Both Sinnasamy and Kenneth were found guilty in the eyes of the law. In Sinnasamy’s case, despite actually having epilepsy, the depth and tracks of the wounds on the murder victim revealed that Sinnasamy had to be conscious at the time of the murder to have inflicted such wounds; while in Kenneth’s case, the courts came to the conclusion that he was more likely drunk rather than suffering a hypoglycemic attack.

TL;DR: susah la wanna succeed in raising the insanity defence, so don’t senang-senang go kill your neighbor who sings karaoke every night like she’s on a world tour, and then claim that you were crazy at the time.