The Court of Appeal has postponed the hearing of an appeal by the family of the late Anna Jenkins as the High Court’s full written judgment is not ready.
In a Zoom hearing today, deputy registrar Nurul Nadia Azman said the record of appeal could not be completed without the grounds of decision by Penang High Court judge Rofiah Mohamad, who ruled on the case in April.
The court fixed Jan 8 for the next appeal hearing.
Jenkins’s family is appealing the High Court’s decision to uphold a coroner’s open verdict on her death.
The 65-year-old Australian went missing during a holiday in Penang in 2017. Her remains were found three years later at a construction site near Penang Turf Club.
In her oral judgment delivered in April, Rofiah criticised the police for treating the case as a missing persons investigation and not a potential crime such as an abduction or wrongful detention.
She said the only evidence hinting at possible third-party involvement was the strange location of the remains and a bone defect not caused by animals.
Rofiah ruled that a homicide verdict could not be entered due to the high standard of proof required, and because no full criminal investigation had been carried out.
She said further investigations could still be ordered under Section 339(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code, which empowers the public prosecutor to direct a coroner to reopen an inquest.
In a July 4 letter to Penang prosecution director Masri Daud, the family’s lawyer David Peter had asked the Attorney-General’s Chambers to use Section 339(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code to reopen the inquest and order fresh police work.
The letter, made available to FMT today by the Jenkins family, cited the High Court’s concerns about the handling of the case.
It also urged investigators to revisit a Dec 14, 2017 police report by Jenkins’s husband alleging that she was wrongfully detained by two Ukrainian nationals seeking her passport, to identify the original crime scene, account for the limited bones recovered, and examine the defects on the skeletal remains.
The Jenkins family said the Australian high commissioner to Malaysia had also met with the attorney-general to convey Australia’s interest in the case.
