I believe that High Court judge Adlin Abdul Majid erred in acquitting the killer in the Bandar Utama school stabbing of murder on the ground of insanity or unsoundness of mind.
Justice Adlin wrote a 77-page judgement on the case of LCH (“Child”), a teenage boy charged with the murder of 16-year-old girl, Yap Shing Xuen, in SMK Bandar Utama Damansara (4) in Petaling Jaya on October 14, 2025, when he was aged 14 then.
The judge’s written grounds of judgement also noted that the acquittal – based on the court’s finding that the accused killer wasn’t “criminally responsible” for his act by reason of insanity – wasn’t intended to diminish Yap’s life or to cause society to forget the girl.
LCH committing the killing of Yap wasn’t disputed in the High Court; the question was whether the boy was innocent of his murder charge by virtue of being of unsound mind during the offence.
“I am therefore of the view that if any measure of good is at all to come from this tragedy, it is that parents, our school system, the courts and the wider public arrive at a greater understanding of the signs and consequences of untreated mental illness in children, so that symptoms are recognised and treated earlier, and never again permitted to progress unaddressed, to a point of such devastating consequence so that other families may be spared what both these families have suffered. It is in this spirit that this decision was made,” wrote Justice Adlin.
Yet, a miscarriage of justice still occurred.
The High Court’s ruling was primarily based on testimony from Dr Ian Lloyd Anthony (“DW2”), a court-appointed consultant forensic psychiatrist and medical director of Bahagia Ulu Kinta Hospital, who only treated LCH after the murder, as well as LCH’s diary entries prior to the incident.
The prosecution didn’t call its own expert witness to rebut Dr Ian; a failure that likely played a factor in LCH’s acquittal.
A key issue that jumped out at me from Justice Adlin’s written judgement was the acceptance by both the court and the expert witness of LCH’s self-purported state of mind based on his own journal entries that began back in April 2025, about six months before the killing.
The accused killer’s diary entries weren’t corroborated by a treating psychiatrist at the time when they were written because LCH didn’t undergo any therapy whatsoever prior to killing Yap.
“In my judgement, the entries in the Journal matter not merely as indicators of the Child’s symptoms, but as independent, contemporaneous corroboration of DW2’s diagnosis,” wrote Justice Adlin.
She noted that after LCH was admitted to Bahagia Ulu Kinta Hospital following the killing, under Dr Ian’s care, the teenager was prescribed antipsychotic medication and within three weeks, LCH’s hallucinations purportedly ceased and his delusions began to dissolve. He had also begun “engaging warmly with his family in a manner not seen for years”.
The High Court saw this as proof that LCH wasn’t faking his symptoms. However, if mental illness is invisible, then the absence of mental illness can’t be proven either.
In other words, we can’t definitively say for certain if someone who committed a violent crime really suffered mental illness or if they pretended to be of unsound mind throughout the entire chain of events, as methodical as months before and after a killing.
LCH’s diary entries, which chronicled “bizarre and psychotic thoughts going on his mind”, contained references to Japanese anime like Death Note, as well as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the killers who perpetrated the Columbine High School massacre in the United States in 1999. LCH had also reportedly developed an interest in other school shooters and serial killers in the US and Japan.
The second issue that disturbed me was Dr Ian’s testimony that LCH likely suffered from “very early onset schizophrenia, the onset before the age of 13”. LCH’s symptoms reportedly appeared at the age of nine in 2020, five years before killing Yap, when he became withdrawn and isolated during the Covid-19 pandemic.
LCH’s purported psychotic symptoms further developed in 2023, when he reportedly suffered paranoid delusions of being spied upon by CCTVs in his house and school.
Unlike early onset schizophrenia that occurs before one turns 18, Dr Ian described “very early onset schizophrenia” as “very rare” and that it “rarely happens”, adding that cognitive impairment from the disease “is very difficult to reverse when it happens in a child below the age of 13”.
Yet, despite the supposed near irreversible “very, very severe” symptoms of “very early onset schizophrenia”, LCH allegedly recovered quickly within just three months of taking antipsychotic medicines during hospitalisation after the killing.
Rebutting Both Limbs Of Legal Insanity
Justice Adlin ruled that, by reason of unsound mind, LCH probably didn’t know both the nature of the act he committed and that the act was legally wrong. The burden of proof for either of these two requirements of legal insanity in Malaysia under Section 84 of the Penal Code is placed on the accused and based on a “balance of probabilities”, not a higher threshold of “beyond reasonable doubt”.
Dr Ian’s testimony about LCH being in a “parallel world” detached from reality, or “delusional atmosphere” during the killing, is also questionable. The psychiatrist testified that secondary delusions in a schizophrenic patient are common, but the “primary delusions” allegedly suffered by LCH were “very very very rare” and hence, indicated a more severe form of schizophrenia.
If it’s so rare, I wonder if LCH was the very first case of “very early onset schizophrenia” that Dr Ian has seen. If so, then that diagnosis sounds very dubious to me.
I’m not a psychiatrist; neither will I ask AI if such cases were previously reported either in Malaysia or other parts of the world.
But this is where an expert witness produced by the prosecution would have been helpful in countering Dr Ian’s diagnosis of supposed “very early onset schizophrenia” or LCH purportedly being completely detached from reality, so as to rebut the accused’s alleged incapacity to know the nature of the act that he committed.
Regarding the second limb on whether LCH didn’t know that the act he committed was wrong or contrary to law, Justice Adlin ruled that the accused also satisfied that requirement, citing the psychiatrist’s report on LCH attaining a God complex like Kira in Death Note and allegedly hearing auditory hallucinations of Columbine shooter Klebold’s voice instructing him to kill Yap.
LCH didn’t try to run or hide, or resist arrest, and he was calm after the killing, which to Justice Adlin showed the behaviour of someone who believed he had accomplished something, not the behaviour of someone who knew he had done wrong.
But both are not incompatible positions — one can have a sense of accomplishment for doing something that was so, so wrong. I disagree with the judge’s contention that LCH’s delusions deprived him of an appreciation of right and wrong.
LCH literally wrote in his journal: “Even though I’m not confident in my appearance and social skills, I’m very confident in my intelligence, observational skills, and capacity to commit a crime.”
The American school shooters he idolised didn’t bother running away after committing their crimes either. Harris and Klebold died by suicide from self-inflicted gunshot wounds in Columbine after killing 15 people in their shooting rampage.
Ghosts, Copycat Killers, Dehumanisation Of People
LCH’s reported belief that Yap would reincarnate as a ghost to haunt him for killing her also proves to me that he knew the nature of his act – that stabbing her to death would kill her in reality, not in some fantasy world.
Many people believe in ghosts; that doesn’t mean they’re insane. Most also don’t “grasp the finality of death” because they believe in some form of an afterlife, in accordance with their religious beliefs.
Rather than irrational thinking from “extensive psychotic phenomena” as contended by the expert witness, LCH imagining Yap’s vengeful spirit causing him to fatally crash a car that he would one day drive on a road, in fact, shows an acute understanding of the wrongfulness of his crime.
What he did was such a fundamental wrong that LCH felt he had to be punished by the ghost of his victim killing him later, i.e. a life for a life. Understanding right from wrong doesn’t get more basic than this.
In conclusion, based on the High Court’s 77-page written judgement, I believe that although LCH certainly had mental health issues, he probably wasn’t legally insane. On a “balance of probabilities”, LCH knew exactly what he was doing and that it was wrong, but he murdered Yap anyway because he was a misogynist and misanthrope, and he wanted to follow the footsteps of infamous school shooters.
While his journal led the court down the rabbit hole of chimerical psychosis, I see it as the plain and simple rants of an adolescent who was very angry, lonely, and wanted to take revenge on the world around him. If he couldn’t get the girl he liked in real life, then he would “get” her in death.
Copycat killings have been documented in other countries, like Zodiac copycat Eddie Seda in New York City. In fact, just like how LCH identified with a fictional character, other copycat killers acted based on inspiration from movies, like slasher flick Scream (which is actually based, in part, on the real-life murders of Florida students in 1990) or even The Matrix.
LCH’s dehumanisation of his schoolmates as NPCs doesn’t necessarily indicate psychosis either. Soldiers dehumanise people that they kill in wars too.
If LCH believed that he was literally Kira in an alternate reality, he could have simply waited for Yap and other schoolmates to die of heart attacks after writing their names down in his “Death Note” notebook, as per the rules of that fantasy world.
But he stabbed a 16-year-old girl up to 200 times and left her to die in a pool of blood in a school toilet cubicle.
A final note about the High Court verdict: I found it a little strange that during court proceedings, Justice Adlin reportedly reminded LCH of the gravity of his offence and not to take his acquittal lightly, which gave him a “second chance at life”, as quoted by his lawyer Kitson Foong.
If LCH was indeed insane to the point of not knowing what he did, then surely he couldn’t be expected to appreciate the consequences of his actions – unless by some miracle of medicine, he’s perfectly all right just a year later.
Reintroduce Jury System For Capital Offences
Malaysia abolished the jury system over three decades ago in 1995, reportedly triggered by the highly publicised Mona Fandey trial. Mona and two others were sentenced to death after a seven-person jury in the High Court found them guilty of murdering politician Mazlan Idris.
Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s government portrayed the abolition of jury trials as part of a package of “radical changes” to criminal legislation, based on reasons like jurors not being legally trained and their supposed susceptibility to emotions and public opinion.
The government also reportedly said abolishing the jury would expedite hearings. Then-DAP secretary-general Lim Kit Siang opposed the abolition.
Given the High Court’s acquittal of the BU killer, I think it’s time for Malaysia to reintroduce trial by jury for capital offences punishable by death, such as murder or drug trafficking.
Malaysian juries should comprise 12 people (simply because a dozen sounds better than seven), who are randomly selected by the court from voter lists. Jury verdicts to convict someone of a serious crime must be unanimous.
If a 12-member jury had acquitted LCH of murder under Section 302 of the Penal Code (he wouldn’t have been sentenced to death even if he was convicted because he was a child at the time of the offence), I would still have objected to their decision.
But it might have been more acceptable to me because 12 people agreed on an acquittal, as opposed to a single person making that ruling.
A decision on whether or not to convict someone of murder or to send them to the gallows shouldn’t be left to one person to make alone.
Despite being legally trained, judges can make erroneous judgements, just like how even the most senior surgeons can make medical mistakes. So the lack of legal training shouldn’t be a barrier to reintroducing trials by juries composed of laymen in Malaysia.
Obviously I’m not saying that non-doctors should be allowed to operate on people. But unlike medicine that requires technical knowledge, adjudication of one’s peers based on the evolving laws, rules, or norms of a particular society – which can change in a matter of a few years, unlike the science of a human body – has existed ever since the Neolithic Revolution (around 10,000 to 3,000 BCE).
Malaysia can impose additional criteria for jury selection if it wishes, like limiting the country’s pool of jurors to those with a minimum degree qualification. Requiring unanimous verdicts reduces the likelihood of discrimination by educated, middle class jurors against uneducated or working class Malaysians charged with drug-related offences.
Malaysians are much more educated now than they were 30 years ago.
The fact that a 14-year-old knows about US school shootings shows the speed of Gen Alpha’s maturity and wide access to knowledge. When I was 14, I barely knew what was going on in Malaysia, much less sociopolitical developments in other countries. But Malaysian adolescents today are aware about climate change, US president Donald Trump, and a host of global and social issues.
Malaysia’s multiracial and multifaith makeup also justifies restoring the jury system because a unanimous verdict by a diverse jury is likely to be more acceptable than the decision of a single judge, who might be subject to baseless accusations of racial bias in certain cases where ethnicity plays a heightened role in public consciousness.
Judges are just as vulnerable as juries to public opinion, especially for high-profile cases. The only way to minimise such influences is to sequester them, away from their phones and the internet, throughout the entire duration of a criminal trial. Even this only goes so far because personal biases one held before the start of a trial may still sway both expert judges and laymen juries.
Perhaps the main reason why many Malaysians might oppose restoring the jury system, even if they’re dissatisfied with the High Court’s ruling in the BU school stabbing, is that we generally lack a strong sense of civic consciousness.
Many Malaysians prefer “subconning” their civic responsibilities to so-called experts or leaders, with little participation in democracy beyond anonymous comments on social media.
This can be seen by general resentment about being called to participate in state or even general elections, despite short trips to the ballot box only occurring once every five years. (As an aside, this is also why local council elections are unlikely to be reintroduced).
Pick Either Side In A Court Battle
A few mental health advocates have tried to straddle the fence on the BU case, saying that respecting psychiatric evidence or recognising mental illness doesn’t mean condoning violence or forgetting the victim.
Judicial proceedings are black and white. In an adversarial courtroom, whether criminal prosecutions or civil lawsuits, there are only winners and losers.
You either side with the accused killer or the murdered victim. Both positions in a criminal trial are indeed contradictory.
This may offend mental health advocates, but I personally don’t care what happens to LCH as long as he’s kept away from society. Even before LCH’s acquittal last week, the government, parents, teachers, and adolescents themselves should have tried to do something immediately after the October 2025 killing.
But for all of politicians’ talk about mental health, nothing much happened. The government, be it the Education, Health, or Women, Family and Community Development Ministry, didn’t form a joint taskforce to look at immediate, medium-term, and long-term measures to deal with the mental health of teenagers and adolescents. Lawmakers didn’t hold town halls with the general public to discuss the way forward either.
The Attorney-General’s Chambers yesterday announced its appeal against LCH’s acquittal.
The High Court ordered LCH’s continued custody and treatment at Bahagia Ulu Kinta Hospital at the pleasure of the Selangor Sultan.
What matters isn’t whether LCH was “freed”; obviously he wasn’t allowed to go home despite his acquittal. Even if he were convicted, he still wouldn’t face a death sentence, which is fine by me because I don’t believe in the death penalty.
But a “guilty” verdict was necessary to show Malaysia that he committed a heinous crime. Instead, a boy got away with the murder of a girl by being paradoxically found innocent of the crime that he perpetrated.
Boo Su-Lyn is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of CodeBlue.
- This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of CodeBlue.
