No thread on the Australian Pot Smuggler 20 year Sentence?

My only thought, harsh as it is, is "at least she didnt get death". Though 20yrs in a bali jail cell is perhaps worse.

The ANNOYING thing is not whats happened to her but how the media here have treated her like some fucking martyr. Theyve done live TV polls, TV crews have snuck into her cell to try and interview her, etc. Now some media and people are clamouring to boycott Indonesia right down to diverting tsunami funds away from them. Its become a joke, but one has to understand the delicate and dodgy history Australia has with Indonesia, so I can see why people have such attitudes (foolish as they are).

I mean we lock people in detention for years simply for being refugees, so I cant get angry about this at all. Plank, eye, etc. Argh.

Also: nine pounds is a LOT of weed.

xpost

????!?!??!

What's the point of going to Third World countries then? Christ.

(...does Bali even count as 3rd world?)

xpost hahaha AMEN gaz!

haha eisbar. does that email work? i'm sending you some H&C ysi's.

which isn't to say that i favor harsh drug laws.

the idea is that they committed the offence in bali and hence were arrested there.

disappointingly (but expected i suppose) the front page of the west (worst) australian today has massive headlines that say "convicted bomb planner: 2.5 years, dope smuggler: 20 years". the poor indonesians. i gotta say i feel more sorry for them than for the beauty school drop out.

Also, I think she might have gotten an even lower penalty if she hadn't been such a noted drama queen in court. Speaking as a law student, I know you should never, ever piss off judges (in ANY country) and waste court time by feigning illness and breaking down every few days. It's not surprising if she really was innocent, but judges just don't have sympathy for that sort of thing.

i read an article in the oz a couple of weeks ago pointing out that the defence would have been a reasonably weak case here as well. roz is spot on too, imagine if an indonesian got caught with 4kg of pot in their bag trying to enter this country, the attitude would be extremely different.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au

gem: Yea, I agree that with what you said too - but the fact is, everytime she broke down, it wasted court time. Seriously, judges hate that. There's a difference between simply crying in court and completely disrupting the day's schedule. I just thought that if she just held back just a little bit, she might have gotten some sympathy.

And yes, they also probably were pissed off that the case got so much publicity even though the defense was very clearly weak.

the balinese rely on the australian tourism dollar, it supports their whole economy. this kind of poor media is not going to be helping them one bit.

It makes me a little bit uneasy that top lawyers here are trying to get her out of the country when there's quite a few others on death row for drug-smuggling in other countries.

There's a guy on death row in Singapore I think and another guy who's serving 15 years in Thailand.

yesterday i heard about one of the local far right wing radio shockjocks here questioning the ability of the indonesian judges to make a proper verdict because 'they don't even speak english'! ummmmmm...

This is more depressing than can be adequately expressed.

Also I was under the impression that many of the laws in Australia in relation to drugs were not too dissimilar from those in Indonesia - the prosecution don't have to prove intention, and instead it's up to the defence to show that the smuggling of the drugs was an honest and reasonable mistake. The penalties are higher in Indonesia obviously...

An interesting aspect of the story is that Western govts actively encourage countries like Indonesia to have super-harsh drug penalties ie. harsher than their own. It's not generally envisioned that this will end up hurting Western citizens of course...

-- Alex in NYC (vassife...) (webmail), May 28th, 2005 1:56 AM. (vassifer) (later) (link)

BBBBBBUT I LOVE GAMELAN ALEX

Yes, but it's not always given. I saw a docu on telly focussing on a Bangkok prison. Personally, I think death penalty would be better than being stuck there.

There certainly is. Curious how that sentence came down with scarcely a mention in the press. Would it be overly cynical to suggest that this was because he is male and of Asian extraction himself, and utterly lacking in immaculately sculpted eyebrows?

Even Chambers and Barlow (the last and possibly only [?] Aust'n traffickers so far executed in S.E. Asia) seemed to have got more sympathy back in '86.

Also, for our american viewers, it has been revealed that her father was up on drugs charges in the seventies, her brother is serving time for armed robbery and there's some shifty indonesian connections in the mix. Makes her looks slightly dodgy, a bit of a villian.

i think all the different comments on this thread are more an indication of how the media can manipulate a story rather than any kind of true version of the 'facts'.

maybe this is unfair, but this raises red flags to me.

her connections to bali suggest that she may have had the means to move that much weed.

it just makes the drug smuggling scenario seem more plausible to me, is all.

it just makes the drug smuggling scenario seem more plausible to me, is all.

I think I want her to actually be guilty, because the alternative is so horrible. It's every traveler's worst fear.

one thing that has become increasingly noticeable is a fundamental lack of understanding of the legal system, any legal system (ours or indonesia's). in my lunch break just now i read the local sunday rag and the letters to the ed are full of 'john howard should just get her out' and 'primitive bloody monkeys how can they ignore all the evidence and sentence the bomber bloke to 2 years and 'our schappelle' to 20'. there is some kind of denial about (a) the fact that she has been convicted of smuggling a not inconsiderable amount of drugs and (b) 'evidence' like some rapist's hearsay and petitions would not be remotely admissible in the australian legal system either. i dunno.

Now she's 'clinically insane'

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25973488-401,00.html

The Australian doctor, believed to be employed by Corby's family, said he was shocked by what he saw during his time at the Indonesian jail, saying the 32-year-old was delusional and paranoid, Sky News reports.

I'm not bloody suprised, I would be too.

delusional and paranoid

they let her keep the weed in jail?

A top psychiatrist, eh? Why doesn't he cure her then?

The Indonesian government should hire the same guy to do just that, for the lols.

lol nice point-by-point breakdown in the story lead

* Doctor "shocked be what he saw"
* Visit arranged by Corby's family
* She's not faking it - psychiatrist

Well known fact that there is a strong link between marajuana use and mental illness. No surprises here.

Posted by: Phil of Sydney 3:06pm today

^king boy pato??

haha

incidentally her lawyer admitted last year to making up the story about corrupt baggage handlers putting the weed in her bag.

That's the kind of thing that never gets as far as our papers, but indeed, here it was: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/articles/2008/06/22/1214073089726.html (do they add the time she's out of jail and in hospital to the time she actually spends in jail?)