Drug Trafficker Avoids Death Penalty For Giving Packets Of Heroin To Pregnant Wife
Earlier convicted of drug trafficking for giving packets of heroin to his pregnant wife, 50-year-old Roszaidi Osman eventually managed to avoid the death penalty.
The Court of Appeal overturned his death sentence in a 3-2 decision, serving him life imprisonment instead.
The majority determined that his major depressive and substance use disorders significantly impaired his mental responsibility for both actions.
Drug trafficker hands pregnant wife heroin
The Straits Times (ST) reports that Roszaidi began consuming cannabis when he was ten years old and started delivering drugs in July 2015.
He has also experienced drug-related problems for most of his adult life.
On the night of 6 Oct 2015, Roszaidi got a lift from his friend and collected a bag of drugs from two Malaysians in a parked lorry.
While waiting for further instructions on what to do with them, he called his wife.
He told her she needed to bring along a plastic bag and “take something” from him. He allegedly did not inform her that he was giving her drugs.
Roszaidi then passed the drugs to his wife who was waiting at Jurong West Street 91.
Convicted of trafficking in 2019
In January 2019, the High Court convicted Roszaidi of trafficking 32.54g of pure heroin.
He appealed against the sentence, with his lawyer Eugene Thuraisingam seeking to reduce it to life imprisonment on the grounds that he was suffering from an abnormality of mind. As a result, this impacted his mental responsibility for his behaviour.
On 1 Dec 2022, the majority of the five-judge panel said Roszaidi’s need to obtain drugs for his own consumption substantially influenced his decision to traffic drugs, noted ST.
Calling it the “product of a disordered mind”, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon said it was exacerbated by his major depressive disorder.
These mental disorders impaired his ability to control his actions to the extent that his overriding preoccupation at the relevant time was procuring and consuming drugs.
The two dissenting justices, however, contended that Roszaidi was thinking in a logical manner at the time. He had presumably transferred the drugs out of self-preservation.
Involving his wife in the process thus became an unintended consequence.
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