I’m showing my ignorance here, but I’m not sure if Bali is traditionally Muslim, for the most part. If that is the case, they take drugs and such very seriously and have given the death sentence for far less. I am horrified by this woman’s situation, and I do not in anyway support it, I’m just saying that they might be using her good looks and “celebrity” status as a way to teach others a lesson. There are laws on the books in every country that make no sense to the rest of the world, the USA is included in this category.
I am fairly sure that she is innocent. She is a frequent visitor to Bali, has no record of even using drugs and had witnesses who said they saw her pack the bag and that it only contained the boogy board. So anyone who believes that she is guilty must believe that the friends and family that testified about the absence of dope in her bag are complicit in the smuggling attempt.
I think the idea that she only attracted any media attention because of her looks is flawed. Originally she attracted attention because of the dubious circumstances…smuggling dope to a country where it is smuggled from, the drugs in plain sight and her insistence that she was not guilty. No other Australian drug smuggler arrested overseas has protested that the drugs were not theirs to my knowledge.
No, it involves education - namely going to school and learning how to spell. 
It’s over the top for us, but in Indonesia she’s been given a fairly lenient punishment. It could easily have been 40 years. Their draconian drug laws are very well known, in this part of the world at least.
Since the Corby case began the Federal police have busted a gang of cocaine smugglers that used baggage handlers at Sydney airport to remove cocaine from flights. There was some feeling that the police had kept quite about this to complete their investigation and arrests even though the information my have helped Corby. After the gang was arrested and after Corby’s defense had been finalised the government provided a letter stating that the baggage handlers in question had been on duty the day that Corby flew via Sydney.
I oppose her getting convicted not because I think she is innocent (I’ve seen nothing but evidence that would be rejected by any serious non-biased observers that would prove her innocent to me) but because the rules of evidence are so ridiculously non-existant there we can’t even be remotely sure if she had anything to do with it. The system is just too corrupt.
If she was smart she would have bribed the officials, I know personally Indonesia officials are all willing to take money.
As it is logically I think she may be guilty. Weed isn’t the type of drug one would really need to smuggle into Indonesia if one was running a drug cartel (doesn’t really make sense to go from Australia to Indonesia.) Unless we’re talking about a tourist who knows about the popularity of weed in the Indonesian Aussie tourist scene and wants to sell to other tourists (I’ve been to Bali, the area of the beach the Aussies party in is basically no-man’s land to everyone else because they get so out of hand.)
I love that a Doper named Atticus Finch is posting on this topic. Seems perfect, somehow.
Very true. My mother holds an Indonesian passport, and whenever she enters the country she’s expected to slip some money in her closed passport to the customs guy doing the stamps. It’s ridiculous - they’ll hold you up for a good half-hour if they have to, just to squeeze another fifty thousand rupiah out of you. Nowadays they just ask outright, though - “Please, m’am, I have three children to feed.”
From what I’ve seen on TV (the media is just eating this up over here) and read - both Australian and Indonesian news - the investigation was sloppy as hell (they apparently don’t have the technology to do fingerprinting on the bag of pot), and the court was generally hostile to her. I haven’t bothered to read the English versions of Indonesian papers; I expect they would have been rigorously censored and “cleansed” for international viewing, but the Indonesian news is being very snotty about the whole thing. I can attest to the fact that the majority of the population there is rather seriously xenophobic - they still blame Americans and by extension all whites, as well as resident ethnic chinese for the Asian Economic Crisis of the mid-nineties.
I have a feeling that her conviction is partially the fault of the legal system, and partially ego at work - showing foreigners who’s boss, now that everyone’s watching. From what I’ve studied of legal systems (I admit it’s not a lot - maybe Voodoo Lou or Campion could back me up?) I don’t think it’d hold up in a western court with the same laws. They’d have a prima facie case from the pot sitting in the bag, but that’d be all.
Its the UK / Australian spelling for jail.
Yes it would seem that they take drug possession far more seriously than mass murder.
One of fanatics involved in the Bali bombing which killed over 200 people received a sentence of 2 and a half years. Then again I guess he was considered to be striking a blow for Islam against the western infidels that were murdered.
Hey, I never said it was reasonable, just well known.
Anyone else think that the Aussies will keep records of baggage weight now? Shit I will weigh my only bloody bags if I pass through Aus now.
oops. Own not only.
Sad, sad only me.
Whenever I hear about these cases I wonder who’d be foolish enough to try to bring nine pounds of marijuana into Indonesia…and that almost makes me believe her. She doesn’t sound stupid enough to do it.
I hate to sound as if I’m banging the drum for legalization, but this is a good example of the problems I have with possession laws. That is, it’s a passive act. Nobody actually has to see the person physically doing something, and by the case law, the person ‘possessing’ may be guilty even though it was someone else who did the ‘putting’, if they can’t explain how it got there. I realize this is a smuggling case, not simple possession, but even so, the prosecution’s case hangs on the fact of possession.
Bali is traditionally Hindu, however the rest of Indonesia is predominantly Muslim.
Except that: when it was discovered, she admitted it was hers, according to a witness who was there, and there was no specific evidence that showed the baggage handler theory to be true in her case.
In other words, she merely offered speculation that baggage handlers might have put the pot in her bag… not any particular evidence that they did.
Actually, on that record she could easily be convicted in a US or Australian court. They have a witness that heard her admit the contraband was hers when it was found in her bag. She failed to present any specific evidence about the drug-smuggling baggae handlers that would tie them to her bag.
What else do you suppose an Australian or US court would need on the record to convict?
More long ago than you may think - up until sometime in the 70’s, simple possesion of pot could get you life in Texas.
10 pounds of pot is delivery with the intent to distribute. That can get you 20 years in the can pretty much anywhere in the US, depending on the lawyers.
She was stupid, she got what she had coming and then some, and she can sit her pretty little butt in jail until she’s served the time she owes the people of Indonesia.
Stupid Ginch.