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NEWS: The Age 17 Mar 05: Evidence clears drug girl: Lawyers

Just to continue the disgusting media cirus surrounding this poor girl:

Live TV coverage of Corby verdict
May 19, 2005
From: AAP
A LIVE coverage of the verdict in the trial of accused drug smuggler Schapelle Corby will be broadcast by Channel Seven on Friday week from noon (AEST).

The network said today it would run uninterrupted coverage of the verdict hearing, crossing live to three reporters in Bali.
Indonesian prosecutors have demanded that Ms Corby, a 27-year-old Gold Coast student beautician, be sentenced to life in prison if found guilty of smuggling 4.1kg of cannabis into Bali.

She has spent seven months in an Indonesian prison since her arrest last year.

From news.com.au
 
maybe im a sucker, but i thought she was guilty until i watched that thing on channel 7.
now i feel really sorry for her.

and i am heading to bali in january and i WILL be getting my bag cling wrapped.
 
I've kind of been convinced the other way. Now I do feel sorry for her and her family because of all of the media attention but I'm starting to think she might be guilty. Regardless of that she will probably be convicted because there is little chance of her being proven inocent.

Even Mr Hinch thinks she's guilty and some of the points he made ring true. Apparently it is common for that sort of high grade weed to be smuggled into bali as the quality over there is quite low.

She gets all the media attention because she's easy on the eyes and makes a good news story and everyone feels sorry for her. Well I did but this constant barage of publicity has actually started to annoy me more than anything so I'm not as concerned as I once was.

I would imagine the Balinese are just as frustrated with the Australian interference into their justice system and they are the ones making the final decision.
 
Corby's dad busted for drugs
By Jennifer Sexton and Greg Roberts
May 21, 2005
From:

Family history ... Michael Corby is pictured at home. SCHAPELLE Corby's father has admitted he was caught with drugs at a similar age to his 27-year-old daughter, but - like her - says the cannabis "wasn't mine".

"I got a $400 fine for about 2g of marijuana which wasn't mine. Some girl had it and they busted the whole joint and I had to go along for the ride," Michael Corby told The Weekend Australian last night.
And six weeks before Ms Corby landed at Bali's Ngurah Rai airport with 4.1kg of marijuana in her bodyboard bag, her half-brother Clinton Rose was locked up in a Queensland jail.

Rose will get out in about four months while Ms Corby will find out in six days whether a Bali court decides to accept the prosecution's recommendation of a life sentence - or worse - or set her free as an unwitting drug mule.

The colourful family history also extends to new friends. As the verdict approaches, tensions within the family have emerged over a deal Ms Corby's self-appointed white knight, Ron Bakir - a discharged bankrupt - has attempted to strike to ensure he gets 50 per cent of proceeds from likely book and film deals arising from her ordeal.

Some family members, including Mr Corby, expressed concern over the proposed profit-sharing arrangement.

The revelations about Mr Corby's brush with the law in the early 1970s and Rose's background come despite the Corby clan repeatedly insisting that no member of the family had a criminal history or was involved with the drug trade.

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But when Rose was previously in jail in 2001, Ms Corby and her sister Mercedes were among his visitors.

Senior judge Gilbert Trafford-Walker found Rose guilty of break and enter, stealing, fraud and the unlawful use of a motor vehicle at the Queensland's District Court on August 26 last year.

While Ms Corby shares a squalid cell with seven others, Rose is serving out his 12-month sentence in the relatively salubrious surrounds of the eight-year-old, $55million, Woodford Correctional Centre north of Brisbane.

John Howard said yesterday Australia was getting closer to establishing a treaty that could allow Ms Corby, if convicted, to serve out part of her time in Australia. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said there was a possibility she would be transferred to Brisbane Women's Prison if she were found guilty.

Mercedes, who lives in Bali with her husband, was asked on the Nine Network's Sunday program to quell rumours of relatives being involved in the drugs trade.

"If there is anybody in your family, a stepfather, a distant relative ... Is there anybody who's ever been convicted or involved in the drugs trade?"

Mercedes replied: "No. Not that I know of. Nah. There wouldn't be."

Mr Corby said Mercedes would not have been alive when he was found guilty of drug possession in the mid-1970s, and would not be in a position to know.

"She wouldn't even bloody know; she wasn't even born."

But he described Rose as the black sheep of the family.

"We don't talk about him. We don't want to know about him. We don't know where he came from - he's not like any of us.

"He's in the slammer, he gets out in two months but he'll probably end up back there.

"He should be a con-man or a politician; he lies so beautifully. He doesn't realise how much he's hurting the family."

Mr Corby said his own drugs charges were laid during Joh Bjelke-Petersen's reign, when Queensland police had a reputation for heavy-handed conduct.

"They (the charges) were all scrubbed, because it was the Bjelke-Petersen days, where if you had an ugly face or you were in the wrong place you got pushed around."

A similar drug quantity in Indonesia carries a 10-year prison term.

Mr Corby also admitted to "half a dozen" drink-driving charges, but said "who hasn't?".

He is also understood to be concerned about a deal Mr Bakir, the Gold Coast-based mobile phone millionaire, had negotiated with Ms Corby and Mercedes.

It was negotiated last month on the basis that Mr Bakir had been funding the legal battle being spearheaded by his close friend Robin Tampoe, of Hoolihan's Lawyers on the Gold Coast. The deal also tied the accused drug trafficker to retaining Hoolihan's Lawyers, family sources said.

But Mercedes yesterday denied she and Ms Corby had signed any agreement. "There's no agreement with Ron Bakir; we never signed anything," Mercedes said.

Mr Bakir refused to talk about the arrangements his agents had discussed with the Corby family, but said there were no negotiations on the table. "I am doing what I have to do to bring Ms Corby home," Mr Bakir said.

"If some family members are unhappy about it, that's a matter for them but maybe they don't understand why I do things. I ask them to take into consideration that for three or four months on this case, I have put a lot of time and effort into it and given 100 per cent of myself."

Mr Bakir refused to talk about how much he had spent on her case, but some of the creditors of the companies he formerly controlled are wondering when they might get paid.

He was declared bankrupt on June 27, 2002, $2.39million in the red after splitting with his fiancee and partner in the Crazy Ron's (now Mad Ron's) mobile phone business, Joenny Doueihi.

The creditors of Crazy Ron's Pty Ltd (in liquidation) - owed a total of $2.26million - include a children's charity for troubled teenage boys, Toogoolawa - owed $19,866 - and the tax office, owed $119,465. Last month another of the complex web of Crazy Ron companies went into administration, Crazy Ron's Communications Pty Ltd, with $1.3million in creditors' claims, including $169,299 from the tax office.

Mr Bakir is no longer a director of the Crazy Ron or Mad Ron companies, but he is the face of Mad Ron's.

Rival mobile phone company Crazy John's spent about $1million taking the Crazy Ron's group of companies to court over the right to be called Crazy, and Mr Bakir lost, with costs.

Crazy John's managing director Brendan Fleiter said his company is still owed $517,000 in costs, and Ms Doueihi claims $475,000 in costs to her lawyers is outstanding four years after the case closed.

"Funding Schapelle Corby is all well and good, but you should pay your creditors first," Mr Fleiter said.

As the debate rages, the seven Indonesian women who share Schapelle Corby's jail cell in Bali have no doubt that she will be going home.

They have been given 20 balls of beige wool and 20 balls of blue wool by her family and are knitting her a shawl as a farewell gift in the belief she will be returning to an Australian winter. For Ms Corby's family, the strain is showing.

"All this rubbish about my little girl being a prostitute and getting pregnant in jail and the rest of it, it's just getting too much," Mr Corby said. "How the hell are we supposed to deal with this? She's not a bad girl. She doesn't deserve this. It's just so stressful."

As she awaits her fate, her old life remains.

Ms Corby's Gold Coast bedroom is a simple affair. A cloth rabbit she has had forever sits on a mattress on the floor. Wildlife and American Indians feature on a couple of simple wall posters. A small collection of trinkets and bracelets are strewn across a bedside table.

Ms Corby shared a rambling, high-set brick home in the old suburb of Tugun with her father, brother Michael, 29, Mercedes, 30, Mercedes' Indonesian-born husband, Wayan, and their two small children.

The family was even more multicultural when Ms Corby met Japanese surfer Kimi Tanakam, while holidaying on the Gold Coast. The couple moved to Japan and married in 1998, but separated a few months later and were divorced in 2003.

The walls of the Tugun house are dotted with photographs of the Corby family. Ms Corby's rusting Corolla hatchback is parked outside.


http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15358628-2,00.html
 
News Updates from The Age

The big shock that awaits Corby
May 21, 2005

The odds are stacked against her and it's not just because of Indonesian law, writes Matthew Moore in Jakarta.

Schapelle Corby's prosecutor is not used to losing, especially in drugs trials. Of the more than 200 narcotics cases he has handled, Ida Bagus Wiswantanu has got 90 per cent of the sentences he has asked for. Those cases where the judge has wound back his requests are the small ones, he says, "usually less than 100 grams".

For Corby, who was caught last October with 4.1 kilograms of marijuana, a drug Indonesia classes as a narcotic, the odds are high. Mr Wiswantanu wants her jailed for life, nothing less. If she gets 15 years, he will appeal immediately. If she gets 20, he will still probably appeal.

Sentencing Corby to life was the best way, he said, to deter foreigners from smuggling drugs into Indonesia. "This is a kind of shock therapy, the life sentence. We have to understand the impact these drugs have on society."

If Corby is convicted next Friday, there is sure to be a barrage of criticism in Australia of how unfair the case has been, and how biased the Indonesian legal system is. And yet those who know something about the Indonesian justice system will give a quite different response. Their view is that Corby has got the sort of trial most defendants can expect when arrested in Indonesia. Like the country's hospitals, where you must pay up-front for sub-standard care or get left for dead, the justice system has plenty of shortcomings.

It is desperately under-funded and notoriously corrupt. Those who work in it are poorly trained and poorly supported. There is no transcript of proceedings, no proper interpreting service and no worthwhile legal aid. And bribes are routinely paid, especially in drugs cases.

Compounding the problem is Indonesia's own fight against drugs. Billboards in the streets and at airports warn of the death penalty for traffickers.

Foreigners also have a reputation for smuggling drugs here: 23 of the 29 drug offenders on death row are foreigners, as were all three of the drug dealers executed in the past year.

To Australians watching the case against Corby unfold, Indonesia's legal system appears bizarre and lawless. TV cameras have free reign in the court and judges, prosecutors and defence teams will agree to be interviewed almost any time. They are happy to canvass how the case is going and to criticise each other in a way that would land them in court for contempt in Australia.

Chief Judge Linton Sirait even said Corby has not done enough to prove her innocence. When challenged on this, he denied he was prejudicing the case and said he had only made the remarks in response to Corby's claim in court that she was innocent. "Many people who are brought to court say, 'I am not guilty.' If we accept this, then everybody must be free. If she said she is not guilty, there should be proof."

Tim Lindsey, the director of the Asian Law Centre in Melbourne, said Australians needed to understand that Indonesia used the European civil law system. There judges routinely quiz defendants in a way foreign to Australia's legal system, which is based on British common law.

But while the systems were different, "the outcome of trials are not so radically different".

Dr Lindsey said one myth about Indonesia was that it presumed defendants guilty until proven innocent. "This is completely false. There are three separate pieces of legislation that state precisely the opposite."

As in Australia, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to establish a prima facie case, and once that is established, the defence must prove its case in response to defeat the charges.

Corby's problem has been all along that the prosecution has had plenty of evidence to establish a prima facie case, and she has had very little to rebut it.

She admits owning the boogie board bag in which the marijuana was found. And four witnesses, two customs officers and two police officers, all say she admitted the marijuana was hers and that she tried to stop the bag from being opened. In court, Corby has denied these charges, but it is a case of her word against theirs.

She tried to show that the bags the drugs were in did not have her fingerprints on them, but to no avail. Police handled the outer bag without gloves from the start, contaminating it in the process, and her request for fingerprints on the inner bag was never done. Whether it is malice or incompetence is hard to say.

Although the fingerprints might not have proved anything, Dr Lindsey thinks this was a serious failing in the police investigation.

One man who understands Indonesian law more than most is not so sure. Sebastiaan Pompe, who is the adviser to to the World Bank in Jakarta, said fingerprinting was of modest importance given that Corby admitted ownership of the boogie board bag.

Trying to prove that a baggage handler in Australia put the drugs in her bags has proved almost impossible for Corby, although the court can hardly be blamed for that. It allowed a Victorian prisoner, John Patrick Ford, to give evidence about a conversation he overheard suggesting a baggage handler had placed the drugs in Corby's luggage. In Australia, such hearsay evidence is not allowed. "I feel the court has shown itself to be extremely accommodating to the defence," Mr Pompe said.

But Corby has benefited from some sloppy prosecution work. Asked by Judge Sirait what contact she had had with marijuana, Corby said she had come across it only in drug education classes at school. She gave a quite different response to 60 Minutes last year. "Oh, I experimented."

Perhaps most worrying for Corby is this statistic from Judge Sirait: of the 500 defendants who have appeared before him on drugs charges in the past 15 years, not one has been acquitted.

"It's interesting statistically," Mr Pompe said. "I find it very hard [to think] you do 500 cases and secure convictions in every one case. Surely you should have one or two where the evidence would point the other way."

Schapelle Corby will be hoping she is the first.


THE LEGAL PLAYERS

Ida Bagus Wiswantanu No one has shown less emotion in the court than the Balinese lead prosecutor, Ida Bagus Wiswantanu, who barely moved when Corby appeared to collapse, forcing him to wait a second week before delivering his request for a life sentence. Wiswantanu impressed many Australians when he successfully prosecuted the Bali bomber Ali Ghufron and persuaded judges to sentence him to death.

Linton Sirait Corby's head judge was a member of the bench that sentenced the chief Bali bomber, Imam Samudra, to death. Many Australians would now appear to hope the Christian, from Medan, North Sumatra, will take a much softer line when sentencing Corby, but he is not known for leniency in drugs cases.

Lily Lubis Corby's chief lawyer has cried openly in court as the prosecutor has demanded her client be sentenced to life imprisonment, evidence of an emotional bond rarely seen between lawyer and client. Few doubt her claim that she fervently believes Corby is innocent. Lubis has argued consistently that prosecutors have not been fair to her client but some lawyers say she should have made more of the prosecution's failure to fingerprint the bags of cannabis.

From: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/05/20/1116533545424.html?from=top5
Corby faces appeal threat
By Matthew Moore
Indonesia Correspondent, Jakarta
May 21, 2005


Indonesian prosecutors say they will immediately appeal for a heavier penalty if Schapelle Corby is sentenced to only 15 years' jail when judges deliver their verdict on Friday.

Chief prosecutor Ida Bagus Wiswantanu said he would probably appeal if the sentence was 20 years unless the judges had good legal reasons for a sentence of less than life imprisonment.

Mr Wiswantanu said sentencing Corby to life was the best way to send a message to foreigners not to smuggle drugs into Indonesia.

"This is a kind of shock therapy, the life sentence," he said. "We have to understand the impact these drugs have on society."

Mr Wiswantanu said Australians protesting about the treatment of Corby were "over-reacting" to charges brought against the Queensland woman after 4.1 kilograms of marijuana were found in her bodyboard bag last October.

"They exaggerate, as if this is a big case," he said. "The case is actually simple because we found this stuff in her bag. But I think it (the reaction) is pretty normal because she's Australian and her fellow Australians feel sympathy for her, but we don't put someone on trial because of his or her citizenship - it's because of his or her offence."

Mr Wiswantanu said he felt under pressure because of the involvement of Australian and Indonesian politicians, including Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said Corby could serve her sentence in the Brisbane Women's Prison if she was found guilty under a prisoner transfer deal. She would not be able to appeal here.

From: http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Corby-faces-appeal-threat/2005/05/20/1116533543841.html
BigTrancer :)
 
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