Move Aside Carcosa Sri Negara .. It's Magistrate's Court Turn!!!

After the screening of the infamous black & white video scenes at Carcosa Seri Negara months ago, the same video footage was shown at the Magistrate's Court, Kuala Lumpur two days ago.

The footage was reportedly shown via two big screens, one for the magistrate while the other facing the public gallery. I would not want to say much except asking since when the Magistrate's Court has been turned into a mere "panggung wayang" ....(Note: There is no pun intended to the word "wayang" here).

From what I could gather the newspaper (NST) reported that the three Accused had admitted guilty to the charge of publicly displaying an obscene video clip at Carcosa Seri Negara on 21 March 2011. The three Accused were fined by the Magistrate after they submitted their mitigation through their counsel.

I am not going to touch on what was submitted in the mitigation - as reported in the newspaper - as I have to give due respect to the counsel who represented the three convicted felons ... It's his job to defend and mitigate and he could submit freely as the judicial system allows him to do so.

The things to ponder is this ...

The following is the normal process which would normally takes place in a criminal case as I understand it:

The Court Interpreter would read out the charge(s) and the Court would ask for the plea.

In this case, the three Accused pleaded guilty to the charge of displaying an obscene video clip. When this occurred, normally the DPP by practice would read out the facts of the case i.e. giving the summary of the case by stating amongst others when the criminal act was committed, where and the time of the offense was committed.

Then, the defense counsel would be asked to mitigate on behalf of his client - in this case the three convicted felons - and would ask for light sentence.

After hearing all the submissions, then the Magistrate would met out the sentence in accordance with the Penal Code provisions of course after taking into account the mitigating factors as submitted by the defense counsel.

According to the news report, the following was reported in the NST @ 25 June 2011 but I could not verify whether the facts as reported in the NST occurred in the order as I stated above:

1. " US experts have confirmed that the video clip screened by ... (the three now convicted guys) was authentic and not tampered with ... These were among the facts of the case read out in court after .. (the three now convicted felons) pleaded guilty ..."

2. " ... According to the facts of the case, Computer Science Professor Hny Farid and Professor Lorenzo Torresani of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire had conducted facial recognition of the man in the video and had found it to resemble ... (a certain politician),"

3. " ... After the facts were read out, DPP ... (yes!!! another Datuk ... ) applied for the video to be shown in Court... The video was played on two big screens, one facing the Magistrate and the other the public gallery, for about 10 minutes..."

Here are some of the issues to ponder:

1. Is here a need to show the video footage? What happened to the proceedings in camera?;

2. The Accused had pleaded guilty to the charge of displaying obscene video therefore the obscenity of the video is admitted. So, again is there a need to show the video? It's not even being contested in the proceedings as far as I could understand since there is no trial due to admission of guilt;

3. The issue is the obscenity of the video then what is the relevance of stating the video had been certified by experts as authentic and the man in the video resembled a certain politician? That is not the subject matter on trial or in question;

The end result is I as a lay man is confused in the whirlpool of the whole thing .... I hope those legal eagles with robes & bips would be able to enlighten me in this issue ...

I need a break and wonder whether there would be a screening of a 3D shows at our Court in the near future...

Till we meet again....