<![CDATA[Capital punishment regulation in Southeast Asia is undergoing significant transformation, particularly in jurisdictions that seek to recalibrate punitive severity while retaining capital sentencing. Indonesia and Malaysia provide two notable yet conceptually distinct models of death penalty reform that remain insufficiently examined in comparative legal scholarship. This article analyzes the reformulation of capital punishment under Indonesia’s Law Number 1 of 2023 concerning the Criminal Code and Malaysia’s post-mandatory death penalty reforms to assess their underlying penal rationales and legal implications. Using normative juridical research with statutory and comparative approaches, the study finds that Indonesia retains capital punishment as a special principal penalty subject to a ten-year probationary mechanism, thereby embedding conditionality within its sentencing structure without eliminating the death penalty itself. In contrast, Malaysia does not reclassify capital punishment but abolishes its mandatory imposition, restoring judicial discretion to impose non-capital sentences in qualifying cases. The article argues that these reforms represent divergent trajectories of capital punishment moderation: Indonesia adopts a conditional retention model, whereas Malaysia embraces a discretionary sentencing model. This comparison demonstrates that similar reformist trends may reflect fundamentally different penal philosophies in the governance of capital punishment.]]>
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