Three convicts freed pending review of sentence

JAKARTA (JP): Three men convicted of murder seven years ago were released from jail in West Kalimantan yesterday as the Supreme Court is now reviewing their case amid suggestions that they were wrongly convicted.

Lingah, 51, Pancah, 43, and Sumir, 33, who have all maintained their innocence to this day, were released on parole from the Ketapang Correctional Institution upon the order of the Director General of Correction Baharuddin Lopa.

The Ketapang District Court in 1987 sentenced Lingah to 12 years while Pancah and Sumir received 11 each for killing Pamor, 72.

The sentences were upheld by both the high court and the Supreme Court.

Five years after they were convicted, a man named Asun confessed that he was the one who murdered Pamor. Asun made the confession while standing trial for raping and killing Pacah's daughter.

Despite this revelation, the three men remained in jail until yesterday, exposing the weaknesses and inflexibility of the country's legal system.

It took efforts by a member of the National Commission on Human Rights, Albert Hasibuan, to bring the case to the public's attention. After a visit to their jail last month, Albert appealed to the authorities to expedite the review of their case.

The Supreme Court, which is already overloaded with a backlog of appeals, is not expected to rule on the men's cases until next month.

Lawyer Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara, who helped defend the three, said yesterday that his clients should demand the rehabilitation of their good names as well as financial compensation.

"But I don't know for sure if they will do that. This will depend on them," Hakim said.

While on parole, the defendants are still required to report periodically to the Ketapang prosecution office.

Hakim said he would request that the authorities not subject his clients to such treatment because they live in a village located some 120 kilometers from Ketapang.

He said that the defense team would guarantee that their clients would not escape.

Hakim, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Advocation, said he believed that there are many others like Lingah, Pacah and Sumir who have been wrongly convicted.

Many innocent people were convicted because the judges based their verdicts on confessions they gave to police interrogators, which were often extracted from them by coercion, he said. This meant that very often a defendant had to admit to a crime he did not commit.

"As a result, there are mistrials and false convictions, which in turn dents the public's trust in the judges," Hakim said.

A similar case occurred in the early in 1980s when the Supreme Court declared that Sengkon and Karta, who were serving sentences of 12 and seven years, respectively, for murder, were not guilty of the charge. They had already spent six years in jail.

Wrong verdicts

Adi Andojo Soetjipto, Deputy Chief Justice for Criminal Affairs, admitted that wrong verdicts could hurt the public image of judges.

Judges should upgrade their skills and commitment to equal justice for all so that the people will trust them.

He reprimanded judges for relying exclusively on the dossiers made before the police, saying that a dossier is only one of many tools used to prove a crime.

However, he admitted that it was difficult for a judge to trust a defendant who withdrew a statement he made during the trial on the grounds that it had been beaten out of him by police interrogators.

"It is common practice for criminals to retract statements they gave to police by telling the judges that they were victims of torture," Andojo said.

He said that it was very difficult to prove what the defendants actually said because when the police were summoned, they would obviously deny using force during the examination.

Even if the police tortured the defendants, it was still not easy to prove because the officers would wait until the wounds healed before sending the defendants to the prosecutors. By doing so the police are covering their tracks, according to Andojo.

Andojo was one of the justices who examined Lingah's appeal in 1988. He said the Supreme Court ruled against the defendants then because there was no new evidence concerning the case. (sim)