Corby's plea for clemency 'a mistake'

May 27, 2005 - 10:03AM
Schapelle Corby's plea to the Indonesian president for clemency may have been a major strategic error, an expert in Indonesian law says.

The 27-year-old former beauty student from the Gold Coast will learn her fate today, after allegedly smuggling 4.1kg of marijuana into Bali in her body board bag in October last year, when the verdict in the case is handed down in a Denpasar court.

Corby has sent a letter to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono pleading for him to help her and telling him how much she loved Indonesia.

Simon Butt, associate director of the Asian Law Group, said Corby's appeal for clemency may have caused more damage than good.

"I've heard conflicting media reports about the contents of a letter which Schapelle allegedly sent to the president this week," Mr Butt told ABC Radio today.

"Now if that is, in fact, an attempt at a pardon, it's quite extraordinary because what she's done is sought a reduction in sentence or some kind of relief before she's even been convicted.

"In Indonesian legal circles ... an attempt at a pardon is actually an implicit admission of guilt, because there's nothing to be pardoned for if you haven't been found guilty yet," he said.

Corby's Australian lawyer Robin Tampoe said earlier this week that Corby's letter was not an attempt to seek a pardon but a plea from the heart to the president.

A pardon was one option that could be pursued if she was found guilty, he said.

Mr Butt said if Corby is found guilty, significant differences between the Australian and Indonesian legal systems could pose problems for a possible prisoner exchange program.

"If, for example, she was punished by life imprisonment in Indonesia, it would be difficult to see how that would be translated to the Australian legal system where our conception of life imprisonment is actually a fixed term, I think it's 20 or 25 years," he said.

"So I don't quite know how that would work or what legislative changes we would have to make in Australia to allow someone to be held in an Australian jail for the term of their natural life."

"The other point is that if she faces the death penalty, then because the death penalty cannot be imposed in Australia, it kind of throws the prisoner exchange agreement out the window.

A three-judge panel will hand down its decision sometime after 9am (1100 AEST) in Denpasar District Court.

