re: looks like corby is going to die - afr
A balanced perspective published yesterday.
Australian Financial Review Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Jakarta Observed
By Andrew Burrell
'Schapelle Corby is guilty." These words, if uttered within the next few weeks by judges in a Bali court, will provoke an inevitable avalanche of criticism in Australia that Indonesia's legal system is unfair and incompetent.
The looming verdict is also making Prime Minister John Howard and his government nervous, because it presents the most immediate threat to the new harmony in the Australia-Indonesia relationship after President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's successful visit last week.
Corby is the 27-year-old Queensland woman who faces the death penalty after being found with 4.1kg of marijuana in her luggage at Denpasar airport last October.
Her plight has sparked an Australian media frenzy and an unusual level of involvement by the Howard government, which has:
* Publicly expressed concerns over the trial.
* Arranged for a Victorian prisoner to fly to Bali to give evidence that was pure hearsay.
* Lobbied Jakarta not to sentence her to death.
* Pushed for a new treaty that would allow her to serve any prison sentence back in Australia.
Even Yudhoyono, in his role as Howard's new best friend, made sure the Bali judges will feel some political heat when he announced that he would watch the Corby trial closely to ensure justice was done.
The underlying theme of much of the reaction in Australia is that Corby is innocent regardless of the evidence; that she is being treated unfairly by the Indonesian courts; and that such a travesty would never have occurred if she were being tried in Australia.
Yet one of Australia's leading experts on Indonesia's legal system, Tim Lindsey, takes a very different view. While acknowledging concerns over the way evidence was handled soon after Corby was detained, he says the evidence presented in court by her defence team seems "pretty weak".
He says that by allowing the Victorian prisoner John Ford to appear in court as the star witness in Corby's defence, even when his evidence was described by Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty as "hearsay upon hearsay", the Bali judges have actually shown far more leniency to Corby than any court in Australia would have done.
Lindsey also points out that Corby's case has been processed remarkably swiftly. Indeed, if she had been arrested in Australia she would probably be languishing in jail for many more months waiting for her trial to begin.
"The evidence presented by the defence in the court is based predominantly on hearsay," says Lindsey, director of the University of Melbourne's Asian Law Centre. "It would probably not be admissible in an Australian court, and therefore you would have to conclude that the defence is pretty weak."
Lindsey notes that Indonesia's courts have recently handled a series of high-profile criminal cases very well. The key Bali bombers were all tried efficiently and given harsh sentences (including the death penalty in three cases) that were welcomed by Western countries, including Australia.
More recently, Indonesia's courts were criticised by Australia and the United States for imposing a relatively light sentence against alleged terrorist leader Abu Bakar Bashir - but this ignored the fact that there was little or no admissible evidence against him that directly related to the charges he faced.
"If you look at major public cases recently, generally they have been managed by the judges with dignity and precision," says Lindsey, who admits there are often still problems with the way Indonesian police and prosecutors collect evidence and present it to the courts.
Proving Corby's innocence is difficult, given that she was found in possession of a bundle of marijuana in the middle of an Indonesian airport, where prominent signs state that drug traffickers will be sentenced to death.
Her only defence is that the drugs were planted in her bodyboard bag by criminals involved in a drug-smuggling syndicate operating at Australian airports. But her lawyers have not been able to prove this.
The closest they have come is when Ford, an accused rapist, told the court he overheard a prison conversation between two unnamed traffickers who had said the drugs were put in the wrong bag.
The Corby case has become big news in Australia even though at least two other Australians are languishing virtually unknown on death row in other Asian countries, including Singapore and Vietnam.
It is highly unlikely, however, that Corby will be sentenced to death by firing squad if she is found guilty. Unlike countries such as the United States and China, Indonesia is not in the habit of executing large numbers of criminals, especially women.
If she does receive the death penalty, Corby can still appeal. If that fails, she can appeal further for clemency to the President.
Everyone will hope it doesn't come to that. But if it does, the Indonesian justice system may not be to blame.
