Malaysia's parliament approved a bill on Monday proposing to make capital punishment an optional penalty and no longer mandatory, multiple local media outlets reported.
The bill tabled for its third reading was passed via voice vote, local English daily Malay Mail reported.
Lawmaker Alice Lau, who is deputy speaker of the legislature's lower house Dewan Rakyat, called for the vote after a speech by Deputy Minister of Law and Institutional Reforms Ramkarpal Singh.
The bill, titled "Abolition of Mandatory Death Penalty Bill," would give judges discretion on whether to hand down a death sentence rather than making it obligatory upon them for certain offenses
Instead of the death penalty, the bill allows for a life sentence of 30-40 years of jailtime and no fewer than 12 strokes of the cane to be given, the newspaper reported.
The legislation must now to be approved in the upper house — the Senate or Dewan Negara — before being presented to Sultan Abdullah, Malaysia's monarch, for the royal assent.
Addressing a press conference after the passage of the bill, Ramkarpal said its approval was a "significant development, particularly for the country's criminal justice system."
"The death sentence is still there, to a certain extent, but will be implemented differently from now on, compared to how it was implemented in the past," he was quoted as saying by Malay Mail.
When asked about opponents of the abolition, Ramkarpal said the government had met with some, including the families of crime victims.
"We certainly sympathize with their position, but we have also tried to inform and convince them that death penalty is not as effective as it was thought to have been," he maintained.
Currently, some 11 offences carry the mandatory death penalty in Malaysia such as murder, terrorism, and waging war on the country.
"It is a difficult task, since most Malaysians support the death penalty because it is seen as a deterrent to crimes, Azalina Othman Said, minister of law and institutional reform, told a panel discussion on Monday during the 52nd session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.
According to Said, Malaysia currently believes that abolishing the mandatory death penalty was a balance between what is right and wrong.
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk, said in his remarks that "for many years, the United Nations has opposed the death penalty in all circumstances."
According to Turk, evidence strongly suggests that the death penalty has little or no impact on deterring or reducing crime.
A number of studies have demonstrated that countries that have abolished the death penalty have seen their murder rates unchanged or even decline, he added.
