Trust in justice
Trust in justice
Why, asked a tearful mother last week, was the rapist and
murderer of her six-year-old daughter jailed for only 20 years?
The South Sulawesi district court judge, a woman, replied:
"Justice had been done." But for the bereaved mother it did not
appear that this was so. Other people, too, might feel that the
court has failed to act as the last bastion of the people.
Unlike other crimes, rape leaves the victim with deep, life-
long scars.
In spite of the many calls, notably from women's
organizations, for judges to get tougher on rapists, no judge has
yet deemed it necessary to impose the maximum penalty of 12 years
imprisonment, for rape, and death, for rape-murder. It is widely
recognized that rape trials often encounter serious evidentiary
difficulties and that gaining a confession from a rapist is no
easy job, but even in clear-cut cases judges have been very
lenient.
Another widely discussed rape case was heard by the Bogor
district court last year. A 22-year-old man stood trial on
charges of raping and murdering a college student. It transpired
that he had attacked her after being carried away by the bedroom
scenes in a locally made film he had just seen. There was a
public uproar. He was sentenced to only 15 years in jail.
Such lenience is doubtless one of the reasons why many public
prosecutors appeal to the High Courts and the Supreme Court from
verdicts in the lower courts. Defendants naturally take advantage
of their automatic right of appeal when the verdict goes against
them. Chief Justice Soerjono, who took over from Purwoto S.
Gandasubrata recently, inherited a backlog of 16,000 appeal
cases. On top of these, 2,000 new appeals are lodged with his
office every year. This is a great burden to the 51 Supreme Court
judges, who have been working day and night to hear the cases.
Soerjono recently complained about the habit of appealing
against verdicts in almost all cases. The reason might be that
people have little faith in the judges of the courts of first
instance. So they have even appealed in civil cases involving
ridiculously small amounts of money.
This problem is not found in advanced countries such as the
United States. In those countries people have come to put their
trust in local and district courts and appeal only in very
complicated cases. Former Chief Justice Purwoto said recently
that this was also the case in Indonesia in the 1950s.
Today, however, many people seem to have been disillusioned
with our courts, as President Soeharto himself confirmed
yesterday. And the emergence of this state of affairs has been
made possible because judges are obliged to base their verdicts
on their own conscience alone.
At a recent discussion with members of the Jakarta Lawyers'
Club Purwoto said that in the 1950s the people still held judges
in very high esteem. What he did not say is: Judges' salaries
were considerably higher then. Only very recently has the
government increased their salaries. We believe that this is an
important step in ensuring judicial independence.
As fellow human beings we understand how a judge trying a
corruption case involving billions of rupiah must feel when he
compares the amounts with his monthly salary.
However, the salary increase does not, in itself, guarantee
fairer trials. There must be an effective system of supervision.
This has, hitherto, been difficult to achieve in this country
because the supervising officers have usually been no cleaner
than those they have been supervising.
But in the judicial field efficacy of supervision is a must.
And judges convicted of receiving bribes deserve heavier
punishment than others.
Finally, the Supreme Court should pay attention to the
question of judges' "conscience", because up to now a common
standard has been lacking. Different judges have handed down
different verdicts on the same facts. Such instances will confuse
seekers after justice even further.