Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 165

Summary: - Articles 66, 69 and 71 of the Penal Code. Their import: dismissal is an ancillary penalty mandatorily imposed upon a public employee sentenced to a felony penalty. It is prescribed without limitation and without a fixed term, unlike where the public employee is sentenced to a misdemeanour penalty. - The judgment's imposition of a felony penalty upon the appellant and its omission to impose the penalty of dismissal, he being a public employee, constitute an error in the application of the law that would require partial cassation of the challenged judgment and its correction by imposing that penalty. The court does not, however, have that power where the appellant alone appealed in cassation. The reason: an appellant must not be prejudiced by his own appeal. Rule: The import of Articles 66, 69 and 71 of the Penal Code is that dismissal from public office is among the ancillary penalties prescribed in that Code and must be imposed upon every public employee sentenced to a felony penalty. Within those Articles, the legislature did not prescribe a fixed term for that penalty; rather, it was prescribed without limitation, unlike the provision of Article 70 of the same Code where an employee is sentenced to a misdemeanour penalty specified therein. Since the challenged judgment sentenced the appellant to a felony penalty but omitted to impose the penalty of dismissal upon him, although he is a public employee working as a warrant officer in the General Department for Drug Control at the Ministry of Interior, it erred in applying the law, requiring its partial cassation and correction by imposing the penalty of dismissal in addition to the imprisonment and fine imposed. However, since the convicted person alone appealed the judgment by way of cassation, and the legally established principle is that an appellant may not be prejudiced by his own appeal, there is, in these circumstances, no way to remedy and correct the judgment.