Court suspends judges' trials over legal technicality

JAKARTA (JP): Central Jakarta District Court suspended on Tuesday corruption trials involving two Supreme Court justices due to legal defects in the indictments.

Defendants Marnis Kahar and Supraptini Sutarto were tried separately by the same panel of judges and were defended.

Marnis's case was handled by prosecutor Surung Aritonang, while Supraptini was indicted by prosecutor Soejitno.

The presiding judge, Rusdi As'ad, said that the court had to suspend the trials of both defendants as the indictments "overlapped too much and were inaccurate."

According to the indictments, both defendants had violated Article 1, Paragraph 1c of Anticorruption Law No. 3/1971, Anticorruption Law No. 31/1999, Article 420 of the Criminal Code concerning bribery conducted by judges and Article 418 of the Criminal Code about gifts received by state officials.

The court claimed that the prosecutors had mixed up the anticorruption laws, which covers a specific offense and the Criminal Code, which deals with general offenses.

"The indictment is questionable... ," Rusdi said, adding that anticorruption laws carry a maximum higher sentence than that of the Criminal Code.

Under anticorruption laws, if found guilty, anyone could be sentenced to life compared to 20 years of imprisonment as stipulated in the Criminal Code.

Rusdi, however, rejected the arguments presented by the defendants' lawyers, who demanded two weeks ago that the court postpone the cases until Endin Wahyudin's case is over.

Endin, the witness who reported the bribery cases, is currently facing trial on charges of slander and defamation of the justices in Central Jakarta District Court.

Endin had claimed that he, a middleman, had given Rp 50 million in bribes each to Marnis and Supraptini, who were on a panel of judges handling a land case. He also said that he bribed M. Yahya Harahap, who presided over the panel, with Rp 96 million.

Yahya, now retired from the Supreme Court, is being tried at West Jakarta District Court over the same case.

Prosecutor Soejitno said after the trial was over that he would appeal to a higher court against the district court's decision.

He said that the judges had different interpretations of the laws.

"It is about the rules of the game. The judges said that the indictment was too much. Actually, it is impossible for us to only mention Article 1, Paragraph 1c (of the Anticorruption Law) without mentioning other articles," he said. (04)