By Rozanna Latiff

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysia’s parliament on Monday passed sweeping legal reforms to remove the mandatory death penalty, trim the number of offences punishable by death, and abolish natural-life prison sentences, a move cautiously welcomed by rights groups.

Malaysia has had a moratorium on executions since 2018, when it first promised to abolish capital punishment entirely.

The government, however, faced political pressure from some parties and rowed back on the pledge a year later, saying it would retain the death penalty but allow courts to replace it with other punishments at their discretion.

Under the amendments passed, alternatives to the death penalty include whipping and imprisonment of between 30 to 40 years. The new jail term will replace all previous provisions that call for imprisonment for the duration of the offender’s natural life.

Life imprisonment sentences, defined by Malaysian law as a fixed term of 30 years, will be retained.

Capital punishment will also be removed as an option for some serious crimes that do not cause death, such as discharging and trafficking of a firearm and kidnapping.

Malaysia’s move comes even as some Southeast Asian neighbours have stepped up use of capital punishment, with Singapore last year executing 11 people for drug offences and military-ruled Myanmar carrying out its first death sentences in decades against four anti-junta activists.

Malaysia’s Deputy Law Minister Ramkarpal Singh said capital punishment was an irreversible sentence and had been an ineffective deterrent.

“The death penalty has not brought about the results it was intended to bring,” he said in wrapping up parliamentary debates on the measures.

The amendments passed apply to 34 offences currently punishable by death, including murder and drug trafficking. Eleven of those carry it as a mandatory punishment.

More than 1,300 people facing the death penalty or imprisonment for natural life – including those who have exhausted all other legal appeals – can seek a sentencing review under the new rules.

Dobby Chew, executive coordinator at the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network, said passage of the amendments was a good first step towards total abolition of capital punishment.

“For the most part, we are on the right track for Malaysia – it’s a reform that has been a long time coming,” he said.

“We should not deny the fact that the state is killing someone and whether the state should have this kind of power… having the mandatory punishment abolished is a good time for us to start reflecting about it.”

(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Additional reporting by Ahmad Luqman Ismail; Editing by Ed Davies, Martin Petty)

By Tim Reid

HENDERSON, Nevada (Reuters) – Larry White, a self-described Republican conservative, was thinking of voting for Ron DeSantis in his party’s presidential nominating contest, believing the Florida governor had a better chance of winning back the White House from the Democrats than former President Donald Trump.

Then came news on March 30 that Trump had been indicted in New York on charges related to a hush money payment to a [censored] star, making him the first former U.S. president to face criminal prosecution.

“Now I am absolutely voting for Trump,” said White, 75, a composer and musician in Nevada. “The indictment was the last straw for me, because Trump has suffered so much political abuse. I think he’s the strongest candidate to contest what the left is doing. I’m all in.”

White’s anger and return to supporting Trump over DeSantis reflected the sentiment of many Republican activists and voters Reuters spoke to in Nevada. The western state votes early in the presidential nominating process, giving it an outsized role in deciding which candidate gains momentum in the 2024 election.

Until the indictment, a majority of the 35 Republicans Reuters interviewed had been willing to turn their backs on Trump and go with a different candidate for the 2024 election, believing he was too flawed and bombastic to win the general election for Republicans next year.

The criminal charges in New York changed all that, upending the Republican primary contest and potentially giving Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement a major boost in his quest to re-enter the White House. A trial is more than a year away, legal experts say, meaning that Trump may face a jury trial as he campaigns.

All 35 Republican activists and voters Reuters spoke to say they will be voting in the nominating contest to choose their 2024 White House candidate.

Every one of them decried the indictment as a meritless, politically motivated persecution of Trump. The charges against Trump are not yet clear, though legal analysts say he may be prosecuted for falsifying business records on charges of hiding the true nature of the payments.

Of the 35, 20 said they had been thinking of moving on from Trump and backing DeSantis. Of those, 14 said the indictment was changing their thinking and leading them back to supporting Trump again.

“I was really for Ron DeSantis,” said Pepe Kahn, at a Republican club meeting in Henderson on Saturday. “I’m now more likely to support Trump than before. I think people who were more neutral than before will now go in to bat for him. This is the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen in the U.S.”

STORMY DANIELS PAYMENT

Trump is expected to be arraigned, fingerprinted and photographed in a New York courthouse on Tuesday as he becomes the first former president to face criminal charges. An attorney for Trump said on Friday he will plead not guilty.

The indictment followed an investigation by a Manhattan grand jury, which heard evidence about a $130,000 payment to [censored] star Stormy Daniels allegedly authorized by Trump in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said she was paid to keep silent about a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. Trump has denied that this encounter took place; concealing payments such as this could potentially violate campaign finance laws.

The reaction to the indictment by congressional Republicans and even his potential Republican rivals for the White House nomination has demonstrated the firm grip that Trump still retains on the party, thanks to the diehard support of a core group of voters.

Party leaders have rallied behind Trump. Even DeSantis, who has yet to declare his candidacy but is expected to do so soon, called the indictment “un-American.”

Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist and Trump critic, has conducted seven focus groups this year with people who voted for the businessman-turned-politician in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, to gauge how they feel about his candidacy this time round.

On Friday, a day after news of the indictment broke, all nine members of her latest focus group said they were going to vote for Trump over DeSantis in the Republican primary – the first time the ex-president has had universal backing in a focus group, Longwell said.

The reason was the indictment, Longwell added.

“People always feel defensive on his behalf,” Longwell said. The question going forward, she said, was whether the outrage on Trump’s behalf among Republican voters will endure throughout the primary and help him defeat DeSantis, or whether it will dissipate and be replaced by renewed concerns about his electability.

Longwell said there is no guarantee the charges will continue to help Trump in the long term, especially if he is indicted in other investigations he faces, including alleged election interference in Georgia and the mishandling of classified documents.

Trump’s campaign boasted in an email to supporters on Sunday that it has raised over $4 million since the indictment was announced. Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, said in an email to Reuters that the charges had “surged” support for Trump.

“Americans from all backgrounds are sick and tired of the weaponization of the justice system against President Trump and his supporters,” Cheung said.

A spokesperson for DeSantis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Tim Reid in Henderson, Nevada; Editing by Heather Timmons and Matthew Lewis)

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A social media influencer who once had 58,000 Twitter followers was convicted by a federal jury of election interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential race over a voter suppression scheme, the Justice Department said late on Friday.

Douglass Mackey, also known as “Ricky Vaughn,” was convicted of the charge of conspiracy against rights stemming from his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote, the Justice Department said in a statement. Mackey faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

In 2016, Mackey, 33, established an audience on Twitter with 58,000 followers. A February 2016 analysis by the MIT Media Lab ranked Mackey as the 107th most important influencer of the then-upcoming presidential election in which Republican former President Donald Trump defeated Democrat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Mackey, a Trump supporter, had been charged in 2021 by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, who said he conspired with others to disseminate disinformation on social media and urged people to cast their ballots through invalid means such as text messages.

In one tweet for example, he had featured a picture of an African American woman standing in front of a sign for an unnamed candidate. Next to the image, it said: “Avoid the line. Vote from home.”

“Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote,” United States Attorney Breon Peace said.

Mackey’s lawyer, Andrew Frisch, suggested his client would appeal.

“This case presents an unusual array of appellate issues that are exceptionally strong,” Frisch was quoted as saying by the New York Times, adding: “I’m confident about the way forward.”

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, Vaughn has in the past openly supported hate groups.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington, Editing by Franklin Paul)

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Many Republicans in the U.S. Congress have responded to Donald Trump’s looming Tuesday arraignment by characterizing the criminal justice system as corrupt, in accusations that parallel their earlier broadsides against the nation’s elections after the former president’s 2020 defeat.

    Trump and his allies in the House of Representatives and Senate have used rhetoric that echoed his false claims of widespread election fraud in the build-up to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

Critics warn that the present partisan rhetoric could shake public trust in courts by undermining the institutional legitimacy of the criminal justice system.

“Trump’s indictment is the culmination of 6 years of the Democrats weaponizing law enforcement to target and persecute their political enemies. Dictatorships operate like this – the US is supposed to be different,” tweeted Senator Ted Cruz, a hardline Republican who voted to overturn 2020 election results.

Trump says he is innocent of the expected New York charges – which revolve around hush money payments to [censored] star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. Details of the charges are as yet unclear.

He says the investigation and three other probes involving his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House are all politically motivated.

Most Democrats have warned against challenging the legitimacy of the institutions of government in defense of Trump, who routinely pushed up against the guard rails of democracy during his four years in the White House and was twice impeached by Congress.

“Political leaders ought to stand up for the American system of government,” said Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren, a member of the House Judiciary Committee who also served on the congressional investigation of the Jan. 6 attack.

“Undercutting the system of government is a serious matter and a threat to our future,” she said in an interview.

Trump has been unrestrained in his rhetoric in recent weeks, calling for protests and warning of potential “death & destruction” if he were to be charged.

He used fiery language hours before his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, in a bid to overturn his election defeat. Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after that riot and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage.

FOCUS ON BRAGG

Most Republicans have trained their invective on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, accusing the prosecutor of mounting a politically motivated investigation aimed at preventing Trump from being re-elected to the White House in 2024.

After Trump on March 18 announced that he expected to be arrested in days, the Republican-controlled House launched its own probe of Bragg’s grand jury investigation, seeking documents and testimony. They have called Bragg’s move “an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority” and said the indictment followed years of the office searching for any basis on which to bring charges.

Democrats questioned whether Congress has the authority to investigate a state-level investigation, particularly one conducted under secretive grand jury rules.

Bragg, a Democrat, on Friday warned Republican Representatives Jim Jordan, James Comer and Bryan Steil, who are leading the probe, against attacking the criminal justice system.

“You and many of your colleagues have chosen to collaborate with Mr. Trump’s efforts to vilify and denigrate the integrity of elected state prosecutors and trial judges,” the Manhattan prosecutor wrote.

House Republicans continued to push back. Firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene said she planned to protest against Trump’s court appearance on Tuesday, while Brian Mast went further and told CNN he would not accept the outcome of a jury trial, saying “I don’t have a trust that a jury will make a fair assessment of this.”

Not all Republicans were so quick to cast doubt on the courts.

Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson issued a statement that called for patience and underscored the legal principle that Trump, as a defendant, should be presumed innocent.

“We need to wait on the facts and for our American system of justice to work like it does for thousands of Americans every day,” said Hutchinson, who is considering his own 2024 White House run.

Historians including Princeton University professor Julian Zelizer said Republican statements about Bragg and the criminal justice system follow a long-established partisan line.

“The party has invested a great deal in attacking the legitimacy of institutions, which is why Trump fit well into the party and continues to be popular,” Zelizer said in an email.

Nicole Hemmer, director of the Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University, warned that Republican attacks on the U.S. criminal justice system could ultimately have dire consequences for courts and juries.

“This is the end-game of the ‘deep state’ rhetoric that Donald Trump has deployed since 2016 to sow those seeds of distrust in institutions of accountability,” Hemmer said.

“We haven’t yet seen a cataclysmic moment in this rejection of the courts. But we are starting to see the steps toward it, as we saw the steps toward Jan. 6 coming from a long way off.”

(Reporting by David Morgan; additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Scott Malone and Rosalba O’Brien)

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge in Memphis, Tennessee, on Friday temporarily blocked a law restricting drag performances in public from going into effect, saying it was likely “vague and overly-broad” in its restriction of speech.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, in February, had signed the bill passed by the state’s legislature that was meant to go into effect on Saturday. The bill aimed to restrict drag performances in public or in front of children, putting the state at the forefront of a Republican-led effort to limit drag in at least 15 states in recent months.

“At this point, the court finds that the statute is likely both vague and overly-broad,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, said in a ruling granting a temporary restraining order.

The judge said the state had failed to justify with a compelling interest the restrictions it aimed to impose.

Lee had said the law would protect children from being “potentially exposed to sexualized entertainment, to obscenity.”

The judge sided with Friends of George’s, a Memphis-based LGBTQ theater group that filed suit against the state.

The Tennessee bill was part of an upswing in recent months in Republican efforts to regulate the conduct of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.

Several planned drag events were canceled over the winter after protests, and many venues felt forced to make previously family-friendly drag shows into adults-only events.

Much of the debate in Tennessee has been over whether drag is inherently a sexually explicit art form.

Performers and civil rights groups have condemned the proposed drag regulations, saying they are unconstitutional, redundant under existing obscenity laws, and would lead to further harassment and violence against gay and transgender people.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington)

(Reuters) – The number of people wounded in the bomb blast that killed a prominent Russian military blogger in St Petersburg on Sunday has risen to 32 from 25 reported earlier, Russia’s RIA sate news agency reported.

Citing the ministry of health, RIA reported on Monday that 10 of the people were in a serious condition.

Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in a St Petersburg cafe in what appeared to be the second assassination on Russian soil of a figure closely associated with the war in Ukraine.

It was not immediately known who was behind the killing. Russia’s state Investigative Committee said it had opened a murder investigation.

(This story has been refiled to remove the extraneous figure ’25’ from paragraph 1)

(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; editing by Robert Birsel)