Judge criticize police over Marsinah inquiry
JAKARTA (JP): Justice Adi Andojo Soetjipto criticized the police yesterday for pursuing their investigation of two men charged with the murder of labor activist Marsinah last year, despite the Supreme Court's decision to acquit them both.
Justice Adi warned that the police effort was futile because by law a person cannot be prosecuted a second time for the same case, even if the charges are different.
"Even if the police investigators find new facts to support their case, the two men cannot be brought to trial for the same case," he told reporters.
Justice Adi presided over the hearing when the cases of the nine defendants, convicted by the lower courts for the murder of Marsinah, were brought to the Supreme Court. The justice exonerated all nine in May, saying that the trials did not provide sufficient evidence for conviction.
Police have since reopened the investigation and claim that at least two of the previous suspects might have been involved in the murder after all.
Legal experts have since been debating the interpretation of the principle of nebis i nidem, by which a person already acquitted of a crime cannot be prosecuted again on the same charges.
Some, including Attorney General Singgih, hold that a person can be tried again for the same case but on a different charge. Others, including Justice Adi, say they cannot.
"This should serve as a lesson for the police that they be more careful and accurate in their investigations," Adi said.
Police have announced that they are continuing with the investigation of the two previous suspects in spite of the controversy.
Maj. Gen. M.B. Hutagalung, deputy for National Police operations, said investigators were only concerned with solving the murder case and finding the killer.
Whether or not the case can be tried depends on the prosecutors and the judges, he told reporters on a separate occasion yesterday.
Muladi, a legal expert and a member of the National Commission on Human Rights, believes that the previous suspects can still be prosecuted if there are sufficient grounds to support the allegations that they were involved.
The prosecution simply needs to add something new to the charge, which could be new accomplices, new charges, or new evidence, Muladi told The Jakarta Post.
He said the acquitted defendants may have been accessories to the murder that was committed by somebody else. "If that is the case, they can be tried on charges of accessory to murder and not for the murder as in the first time round," he said.
He advised the police and government prosecutors to study carefully the rulings of the Supreme Court which acquitted the defendants before they draft a new dossier based on their new evidence.
Marsinah's badly mutilated body was found in Nganjuk, East Java, only a few days after she led a workers strike in May 1994 at a watchmaking company in Sidoarjo, near Surabaya, where she worked.
Nine people -- the company's owner, management staff and security guards -- were later found guilty by the lower courts based on the prosecution's dossier that linked the labor dispute with the murder. All nine suspects denied any role in the murder and said that they were framed for the crime committed by others. (imn/har)