Traffic passes in front of the Supreme Court in Daun Penh district’s Chaktomuk commune in Phnom Penh. Hong Menea
The Supreme Court on Monday decided to return the case of a man found guilty of a grisly 2015 murder in Kampong Cham province to the Appeal Court after his life sentence was reduced.
The 22-year-old knocked a younger man unconscious before stabbing him and slitting his throat. He placed the dead body in a bag in Memot district’s Memong commune in 2015.
On September 2, the Appeal Court reduced his life sentence to 30 years.
Reading out Monday’s decision at the Supreme Court, Judge Chan Raingsey identified the convict as Heng Sokmean, and the victim as 20-year-old Ly Ravuth, both residents of Memong commune.
Raingsey said the Appeal Court prosecutor had filed an appeal against the reduced sentence.
The judge said he had deliberated the case and listened to a statement by the convict, in which he requested the Supreme Court to accept the 30-year sentence.
“The Supreme Court rules to refer the case back to the Appeal Court,” Raingsey said.
In the courtroom, Keo Many, the victim’s mother, said she had demanded $20,000 in compensation at the Kampong Cham Provincial Court and the court eventually sentenced the convict to life in prison.
She said the crime fully deserved a life sentence because Sokmean had killed her son so brutally.
“My son was killed. After that verdict, I thought I could try to forget about the convict and what he did.
“But then he asked the Appeal Court to reduce his life sentence to 30 years. If that is the case, when he has served his prison sentence, his life will still have some meaning,” Many said.
Sokmean told the Supreme Court that he had known the victim for a day before the murder was committed.
After getting to know each other, Sokmean said, he persuaded Ravuth to go into an empty wooden house.
He said three other people were waiting in the house and he began to smoke drugs with them. Sokmean tried to persuade the victim to join them, but he refused.
Because he refused, Sokmean grabbed a piece of wood and hit the victim on the head, knocking him out, before stabbing him and slitting his throat.
Later Sokmean took the victim’s motorbike and sold it for nearly $1,000.
A resident of Memong commune found the victim’s body in a nylon bag on August 28, 2015.
After he had spent all the money from the sale of Ravuth’s motorbike, Sokmean ran away from the commune but was arrested by police a few months later.
In February 2016, the Kampong Cham Provincial Court sentenced Sokmean to life in prison for premeditated murder, but he launched an appeal.
After the Appeal Court reduced Sokmean’s prison sentence to 30 years, the prosecutor then filed a further appeal against the reduced sentence to the Supreme Court.
