Samantha Jones: British woman avoids death penalty, sentenced to 42 months in prison in Malaysia

Murder convictions carry mandatory death sentence in the country

A British woman accused of killing her husband in Malaysia has been sentenced to 42 months in prison after she pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of culpable homicide.

Prosecutors reduced the murder charge to murder without intent following appeals by the defence, her lawyer Sangeet Kaur Deo said.

Had Samantha Jones, 51, been found guilty of murder, she would have been sentenced to hang, as the country has a mandatory death sentence.

“I was scared, and he was so angry,” Ms Kaur Deo quoted Ms Jones as saying in court. “I miss him terribly. What I did that night was unintended. I tried to stop him, I did not know it would happen like this.”

Ms Jones was also fined 10,000 ringgit (£1,816), her lawyer said.

Ms Jones was charged after police found a bloody knife in the couple’s Malaysian resort home, where John William Jones, 62, was found dead with a stab wound in his chest on 18 October 2018.

On Monday, police brought her to the courthouse in Alor Setar, in the northern state of Kedah, handcuffed and wearing a mask.

Ms Jones, who is originally from Somerset, had confessed to stabbing her husband during an argument, police have said.

Her legal team had previously said she acted in self-defence following years of domestic abuse, according to the Mirror.

The couple relocated to Langkawi island 11 years ago under Malaysia My Second Home, a scheme which grants foreign nationals a renewable 10-year visa.

Nearly half of those on death row in Malaysia are foreigners, an Amnesty International report found in October.

The country has previously backpedalled on plans to abolish the death penalty, but a moratorium on executions has been in place since 2018.