Experts differ on sentence on pedophile

JAKARTA (JP): Experts said yesterday they basically agreed on the death sentence, but differed on the verdict handed down yesterday to Siswanto, alias Robot Gedek. He was found guilty of the sexual abuse and premeditated murders of 12 boys.

Criminologist Purnianti said the sentence was progress in the protection of children.

"It was the final say in the interest of the victims," she said yesterday.

"A person (intending to do a similar crime) would think twice," she added. She referred to protection of children outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Right of the Child, which Indonesia ratified in 1990.

Moreover, the victims, all street boys, had no parents and were more vulnerable, she said.

A criminal code lecturer, Loebby Loqman, questioned whether all necessary factors had been weighed before the sentence was given.

He said he was worried that the sentence "only reflected revenge," which should not be its purpose.

"The judge might have been influenced by the vindictive outcry of the public," he said.

People seem vengeful, he said, even by trivial things such as minor traffic accidents, in which drivers could be mobbed by angry bystanders.

The defendant, Loebby said, should have been given a trial period to rehabilitate before the judge decided on the sentence.

"The defendant should be given a chance for rehabilitation," he said.

In the People's Republic of China, he said, judges give defendants two years before a death sentence is handed down.

Loebby and Purnianti separately said that death sentences should be handed down very selectively.

Purnianti said it would be "primitive" if every case which evoked public anger resulted in a death sentence.

A lack of selectivity would mean total distrust in laws and correctional institutions, she said.

Commenting on the controversy of the sentence, she said, "we still need the threat that a death sentence gives, even though it may not be carried out," she said.

She said one requirement in handing down the sentence was that the defendant understood what he faced. Yesterday the judge tried to make Robot understand with repeated explanations, to which Robot's response was unclear. Robot's lawyers have appealed.

Purnianti said even though Robot has not received any rehabilitation yet, "the panic he caused (among the public) could not be measured".

The public would hopefully be influenced by the sentence's message to protect children, she said, and pay more attention to street children. (anr)