Three convicts freed pending review of sentence

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)