SODOMY TRIALS ARE MOSTLY ABOUT ACTS OF DEFIANCE AND A SHOW OF STRENGTH
– JUST LIKE OTHER SERIOUS CRIMINAL CASES, ESPECIALLY MURDER AND THE DRUG-RELATED ONES.
By Mansor Puteh
SO FROM PAST EXPERIENCEDS, WE CAN SEE HOW THE BEST METHOD OF DEFENCE FOR SERIOUS COURT CASES BY THOSE WHO CAN AFFORD IT, IS TO DELAY JUDGMENT AND PUNISHMENT MOSTLY, AND TO USE THE GLARE OF PUBLICITY TO GET CHEAP POLITICAL MILEAGE BY CASTING ASPERSIONS ON EVERYTHING. NOTHING IS SPARED.
IN THE END THEY WILL BEND AND SEEK PITY AFTER JUDGMENT IS GIVEN WITHOUT SHOWING ANY SIGN OF REMORSE FOR THE CRIME THAT HAD BEEN COMMITTED.
ONE NEEDS MINIMAL DEFENCE IF ONE KNOWS ONE IS NOT GUILTY. BUT ONE CAN DO WITH EVERYTHING IF ONE KNOWS THAT ONE IS NOT SO.
Like what” A convincing alibi.
If there is no alibi, then there is a strong likelihood that sodomy might have happened, even though medically that cannot be proven. But homosexual relationship cannot be discounted so easily.
Finding a technical flaw in the defense is the best way. But it is not foolproof even though there are many of them to find fault with.
So in the end, the judiciary and public get sodomized.
Is there no shame at all for being charged for such a crime?
Those who have been charged for sodomy know that the cases against them are difficult to challenge. Someone had been sodomized and he and his then partner should know it.
Only a person with skin so thick in his face who can go about as though it is a small matter he is dealing with.
While the others with lesser crimes go to court with their faces hidden in their own shirts or handkerchiefs and their heads bowed to avoid from being shot by the press photographers.
How could anyone not know he had not been sodomized by anyone?
It will be impossible for the person who had been sodomized not to remember who had sodomized him.
Any why must some members of the public want to pass judgment on who is right or who is wrong, when the case is being heard?
Those who charge that the case is a trumped up one, what evidence do they have that the court does not to support such an outrageous claim?
Let the case be heard and let the judges made their decision.
Sodomy cases are no different than the other cases that had been heard and tried in court. They involve the same elements. Victims have been determined and the scenarios have been created.
What the accused can give as evidence can therefore be countered by the accused. And in the end, there can be a decision on who has been telling the truth and who has been trying to deflect attention on the minor legal and technical issues to gain grounds for an acquittal.
Even if there is an acquittal, and the accused be allowed to go free, but there is still his conscience that will continue to hound him.
Were there others whom he had also sodomized in the past who are not willing to give evidence to prove that the sodomist is not a serial one?
A sodomist normally has many past experiences. He is lucky that the others whom he had sodomized have chosen not to expose his misdeeds so the sodomist is allowed to do what he likes to do until the next one suddenly has a change of heart.
This is when the problem happens. And this is also when court cases become necessary.
There are a lot of activities happening before such acts happen, and when it finally happened, it leaves a plot so thick and real that it will be difficult for even the smartest authors or screenwriters to conjure up, without sounding artificial or contrived.
The only thing that the person who has been charged for sodomy to do is to delay the trial and bring up inconsequential issues to distract the media and public which can also give him and his lawyers some time to think of their next move.
Rebutting allegations by the person whom the alleged sodomist had sodomized would be very difficult to do.
The best method is to find a technicality and charge that the charge against the alleged sodomized to be inherently flawed.
There needs to be details, of being at the same time and place together and there are detailed descriptions of what the person wore, said and done. These are all very difficult to counter.
In the end, it’s the courts and public who will be made fools of while the alleged sodomists try to see what ‘other benefits’ he could get from them.
Sodomy trials are not new in Malaysia; some men have been convicted and sentenced. There was no ‘fanfare’, no controversy and appeals. Those who had been charged, tried and sentenced to jail did not have the benefit of having a ‘name’ to distract the public and the media.
Where was the media in the west when those men where tried and sentenced? Why were they not crying foul and publicize the cases?
Their trials went on smoothly and they admitted to having committed their crime.
And unfortunately for many, there won’t be any ‘media foreplay’ that they can roll in and take advantage of to publicize their political views, as they languish in prison, if this is the just justice that they had been craving for to prove their innocence they were expecting to get.
It all boils down to this: If a lesser person had been charged for sodomy, his trial would have gone almost unnoticed. Not an inch of news would have been published in the papers or a minute of it reported on national news on television.
And why was a person who had been charged for the same offence before can be allowed bail for being charged for the same offence the second time?
This is quite baffling.
If an ordinary rapist who had been discharged for the first charge had charged for a repeat offence, surely, the courts would have allowed him bail.
However, in most those who had been charged for such offences do not normally get bail.
In most cases of sodomy, the trial would go on smoothly without them being turned into a circus, and definitely no mattress would be produced as evidence during the course of the trial which could not be dragged on and on for months and even years. Everything would be over in a matter of weeks if not days.
The person who was charged for committing sodomy or ‘committing crimes against the laws of nature’ would have got natural justice and be sent to prison to continue his incarceration from the public for years until he is forgotten, and until his basic animal instincts had been forgotten.
And the said person had to languish in prison without being able to create any sort of out-of-court drama whatsoever.
Some men had actually been charged for sodomy and duly sentenced. They took it gentlemanly without a fuss since they knew right from the start what they were doing was a crime, for which they did not have to argue with anyone with, unless if they are in another country where it is not such.
The strange part is that these lesser men who had been charged would have gone to the courts with their faces covered, while those who know they are guilty as charged would often go there with their heads held high.
The reasons are obvious, since they are people of substance and some history; so there is no point for them to hide their faces. Their photos are everywhere. And the media have many of them to use including video footages especially.
I know of a story of a man who had been charged for sodomy, who had once been invited to attend a dance performance staged by The Eighties Drama Center which later became known simply as The Drama Center.
The performance was at the then Experimental Theater of Universiti Malaya, and this man was invited as the guest-of-honor, since he knew the producers and directors from the group from their boarding school days, and also because he is now a better known and recognized person in Malaysian politics.
However, a few minutes into the show, this man, who was then not married yet and was still young left the hall. The reason was because he said he did not like to look at the sight of men performing in the play who were wearing leotards, with their crutches protruding.
Was he against seeing such a sight because he was not able to see more of it?
Unfortunately, charges of sodomy have not been heard to have been instituted in the west, especially with consenting male adults because it is not a crime there.
However, if similar acts were to have been committed in Malaysia, they have to go by the laws of the country. It is the law which no one had actually objected to and taken the mater for debate in parliament so that such laws could be considered for repeal.
And where were the lawyers of high profile cases who are said to be concerned about how justice might be tempered with because they claim their clients had been charged wrongly, so they demand their cases be heard?
But why are they only concerned in high profile cases? Because the stakes are high.
Yet, more surprisingly is how there is no one or group which has even tried to circumvent the process by trying to repeal such laws so that sodomy is not a crime anymore between two consenting adults in Malaysia, so the onus of those who charge for having been sodomized must prove that what had happened to them was not by consent.
By Mansor Puteh
SO FROM PAST EXPERIENCEDS, WE CAN SEE HOW THE BEST METHOD OF DEFENCE FOR SERIOUS COURT CASES BY THOSE WHO CAN AFFORD IT, IS TO DELAY JUDGMENT AND PUNISHMENT MOSTLY, AND TO USE THE GLARE OF PUBLICITY TO GET CHEAP POLITICAL MILEAGE BY CASTING ASPERSIONS ON EVERYTHING. NOTHING IS SPARED.
IN THE END THEY WILL BEND AND SEEK PITY AFTER JUDGMENT IS GIVEN WITHOUT SHOWING ANY SIGN OF REMORSE FOR THE CRIME THAT HAD BEEN COMMITTED.
ONE NEEDS MINIMAL DEFENCE IF ONE KNOWS ONE IS NOT GUILTY. BUT ONE CAN DO WITH EVERYTHING IF ONE KNOWS THAT ONE IS NOT SO.
Like what” A convincing alibi.
If there is no alibi, then there is a strong likelihood that sodomy might have happened, even though medically that cannot be proven. But homosexual relationship cannot be discounted so easily.
Finding a technical flaw in the defense is the best way. But it is not foolproof even though there are many of them to find fault with.
So in the end, the judiciary and public get sodomized.
Is there no shame at all for being charged for such a crime?
Those who have been charged for sodomy know that the cases against them are difficult to challenge. Someone had been sodomized and he and his then partner should know it.
Only a person with skin so thick in his face who can go about as though it is a small matter he is dealing with.
While the others with lesser crimes go to court with their faces hidden in their own shirts or handkerchiefs and their heads bowed to avoid from being shot by the press photographers.
How could anyone not know he had not been sodomized by anyone?
It will be impossible for the person who had been sodomized not to remember who had sodomized him.
Any why must some members of the public want to pass judgment on who is right or who is wrong, when the case is being heard?
Those who charge that the case is a trumped up one, what evidence do they have that the court does not to support such an outrageous claim?
Let the case be heard and let the judges made their decision.
Sodomy cases are no different than the other cases that had been heard and tried in court. They involve the same elements. Victims have been determined and the scenarios have been created.
What the accused can give as evidence can therefore be countered by the accused. And in the end, there can be a decision on who has been telling the truth and who has been trying to deflect attention on the minor legal and technical issues to gain grounds for an acquittal.
Even if there is an acquittal, and the accused be allowed to go free, but there is still his conscience that will continue to hound him.
Were there others whom he had also sodomized in the past who are not willing to give evidence to prove that the sodomist is not a serial one?
A sodomist normally has many past experiences. He is lucky that the others whom he had sodomized have chosen not to expose his misdeeds so the sodomist is allowed to do what he likes to do until the next one suddenly has a change of heart.
This is when the problem happens. And this is also when court cases become necessary.
There are a lot of activities happening before such acts happen, and when it finally happened, it leaves a plot so thick and real that it will be difficult for even the smartest authors or screenwriters to conjure up, without sounding artificial or contrived.
The only thing that the person who has been charged for sodomy to do is to delay the trial and bring up inconsequential issues to distract the media and public which can also give him and his lawyers some time to think of their next move.
Rebutting allegations by the person whom the alleged sodomist had sodomized would be very difficult to do.
The best method is to find a technicality and charge that the charge against the alleged sodomized to be inherently flawed.
There needs to be details, of being at the same time and place together and there are detailed descriptions of what the person wore, said and done. These are all very difficult to counter.
In the end, it’s the courts and public who will be made fools of while the alleged sodomists try to see what ‘other benefits’ he could get from them.
Sodomy trials are not new in Malaysia; some men have been convicted and sentenced. There was no ‘fanfare’, no controversy and appeals. Those who had been charged, tried and sentenced to jail did not have the benefit of having a ‘name’ to distract the public and the media.
Where was the media in the west when those men where tried and sentenced? Why were they not crying foul and publicize the cases?
Their trials went on smoothly and they admitted to having committed their crime.
And unfortunately for many, there won’t be any ‘media foreplay’ that they can roll in and take advantage of to publicize their political views, as they languish in prison, if this is the just justice that they had been craving for to prove their innocence they were expecting to get.
It all boils down to this: If a lesser person had been charged for sodomy, his trial would have gone almost unnoticed. Not an inch of news would have been published in the papers or a minute of it reported on national news on television.
And why was a person who had been charged for the same offence before can be allowed bail for being charged for the same offence the second time?
This is quite baffling.
If an ordinary rapist who had been discharged for the first charge had charged for a repeat offence, surely, the courts would have allowed him bail.
However, in most those who had been charged for such offences do not normally get bail.
In most cases of sodomy, the trial would go on smoothly without them being turned into a circus, and definitely no mattress would be produced as evidence during the course of the trial which could not be dragged on and on for months and even years. Everything would be over in a matter of weeks if not days.
The person who was charged for committing sodomy or ‘committing crimes against the laws of nature’ would have got natural justice and be sent to prison to continue his incarceration from the public for years until he is forgotten, and until his basic animal instincts had been forgotten.
And the said person had to languish in prison without being able to create any sort of out-of-court drama whatsoever.
Some men had actually been charged for sodomy and duly sentenced. They took it gentlemanly without a fuss since they knew right from the start what they were doing was a crime, for which they did not have to argue with anyone with, unless if they are in another country where it is not such.
The strange part is that these lesser men who had been charged would have gone to the courts with their faces covered, while those who know they are guilty as charged would often go there with their heads held high.
The reasons are obvious, since they are people of substance and some history; so there is no point for them to hide their faces. Their photos are everywhere. And the media have many of them to use including video footages especially.
I know of a story of a man who had been charged for sodomy, who had once been invited to attend a dance performance staged by The Eighties Drama Center which later became known simply as The Drama Center.
The performance was at the then Experimental Theater of Universiti Malaya, and this man was invited as the guest-of-honor, since he knew the producers and directors from the group from their boarding school days, and also because he is now a better known and recognized person in Malaysian politics.
However, a few minutes into the show, this man, who was then not married yet and was still young left the hall. The reason was because he said he did not like to look at the sight of men performing in the play who were wearing leotards, with their crutches protruding.
Was he against seeing such a sight because he was not able to see more of it?
Unfortunately, charges of sodomy have not been heard to have been instituted in the west, especially with consenting male adults because it is not a crime there.
However, if similar acts were to have been committed in Malaysia, they have to go by the laws of the country. It is the law which no one had actually objected to and taken the mater for debate in parliament so that such laws could be considered for repeal.
And where were the lawyers of high profile cases who are said to be concerned about how justice might be tempered with because they claim their clients had been charged wrongly, so they demand their cases be heard?
But why are they only concerned in high profile cases? Because the stakes are high.
Yet, more surprisingly is how there is no one or group which has even tried to circumvent the process by trying to repeal such laws so that sodomy is not a crime anymore between two consenting adults in Malaysia, so the onus of those who charge for having been sodomized must prove that what had happened to them was not by consent.
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