Death Penalty News

"We will not release prisoners convicted for corruption, illegal logging, terrorism, drug crimes, gross human rights crimes or transnational organized crimes." Jakarta. The Justice and Human Rights Ministry passed a new decree on Thursday allowing the release of 30,000 prisoners, including juvenile delinquents, to avoid mass coronavirus infections in Indonesia's overcrowded jails.  "We are trying to suppress the spread of Covid-19 in our prison system," Nugroho, the acting director-general for correctional facilities, said on Wednesday. "The inmates are vulnerable because most of them share a cell. The risk of contagion is high since our jails are overcrowded," he said.  Indonesia has 1,677 coronavirus cases by Wednesday, almost double the number a week ago. There have been 157 deaths and only 103 recoveries. The government has imposed a large-scale social distancing that includes the closure of schools and offices and a ban on r...

Prison inmates serving life sentences may soon be free to walk the streets due to a change in the law made this year, according to daily Postimees. The law, which affects those who were handed life sentences in the 1990s after Estonia removed the death penalty in 1998, was changed in February this year, coming into effect on Jul. 1, but did not get much media attention, Postimees reports (link in Estonian), since it took place while the election campaigns were in full swing. Under the change, the time limit before someone serving a life sentence can appeal was reduced to 25 years, from 30 years, meaning an inmate sentenced in 1994 could appeal this year rather than in 2024. Currently, 41 inmates in Estonia are serving life sentences for murder and also rape, but only one individual, Oleg Piyatinksi (60), imprisoned for murder in 1983 and thus eligible to apply for release in 2013, has done so, though the Supreme Court upheld the rejection of his application earlier this...

Renae Lawrence Renae Lawrence, a member of the infamous Australian smuggling group the Bali Nine, has gotten six months knocked off her prison sentence , but that doesn’t mean she’ll get out next year, says the woman’s father. Lawrence, who’s currently serving out her sentence in Bali’s remote Bangli prison, received a remission for good behavior in concurrence with Indonesian’s Independence Day. It is customary for the country to reduce sentences ever so slightly during special holidays for well-behaved Indonesian and foreign prisoners alike. While it was reported that Lawrence could see a release date of next year if her recommendation for a remission went through, that won’t be the case for the 39-year-old, because she’s got a “subsidiary sentence”: an extra six months on top of her sentence that she must serve unless she pays a $100,000 fee. “She won’t be getting out when they say she’s getting out because there’s a $100,000 fine she’s got to pay and we can’t pay t...

Bali's Kerobokan prison Jakarta: Bali nine drug mule Renae Lawrence is expected to have her jail sentence cut by six months which would see her complete her prison term by the middle of next year. However it is likely she will serve an additional six months behind bars rather than pay the one billion rupiah ($100,000) fine that accompanied her jail sentence. The prison governor of Bangli jail, Diding Alfian, told Fairfax Media that Lawrence had been recommended for a six-month remission as part of Indonesian Independence Day celebrations on August 17. Meanwhile Bali authorities said Australian fugitive Shaun Edward Davidson could have been a free man on Thursday if he had been granted a sentence remission. Davidson escaped from Kerobokan jail via a waste tunnel in late June with just 10 weeks left of his 12-month jail sentence for using another man's passport. "He was in for forged documents, we would have recommended him for remission if he behave...

Bali's notorious Kerobokan prison BALI Nine member Renae Lawrence has today had another six months shaved off her 20-year sentence for drug trafficking. Lawrence was among thousands of prisoners across Indonesia awarded a sentence remission as part of the country’s Independence Day celebrations. Three other Australians jailed at Kerobokan prison also had between one and six months cut from their sentences. But fellow Bali Nine members, Matthew Norman and Si Yi Chen, who have for years tried to have their life sentences reduced, have so far not received any news of a sentence cut. Under Indonesian law, prisoners serving life terms do not qualify for the yearly remissions but can apply for a determinate sentence of 20 years. They have applied each year but so far not been awarded the reduced sentence. Norman and Chen today displayed the work of their rehabilitation programs at the jail’s Independence Day celebration. Both told of their hopes to one day be...

Patrick Henry in August 2002 The Patrick Henry affair was a French judicial affair concerning Patrick Henry, convicted for the kidnap and murder of 7-year-old Philippe Bertrand in early 1976. The emotionally charged trial began on January 17, 1977. Henry's case entered legal history after the performance of his defence lawyer, Robert Badinter , heralded the abolition of the death sentence in France, the last western European country to practise it. Henry's case had driven the French Nation into a lynch-mob fury. In 1976 he was a blond, boyish 22-year-old when he kidnapped seven-year-old Philippe Bertrand from outside the village school of Pont-Sainte-Marie. Almost immediately after the kidnap he garrotted the boy. But it was his subsequent behaviour that, when it came to light, drove the nation to bay for his blood. After the killing, Henry sent ransom demands to Philippe's parents. Although the boy was already dead he promised his safe return for a million...

Renae Lawrence Indonesian prison officials have recommended Bali Nine drug mule Renae Lawrence has a further two months cut from her sentence. Lawrence, 37, is serving her 20-year sentence in Bali's Bangli Prison, where staff confirmed she had been put forward as one of the inmates to have their sentence reduced for good behaviour as a reward this Christmas. Prison officials say the former Newcastle woman is focused on being a diligent prisoner, and applies herself to classes in handicrafts. Earlier this year, Indonesia executed Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, other members of the nine young Australians who tried to smuggle drugs through Bali in 2005. The other members are all serving life sentences and not eligible for sentence cuts. It will be the 10th Christmas in prison for Martin Stephens, Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, Michael Czugaj, Matthew Norman, Si Yi Chen and Scott Rush. At Kerobokan jail, a spokesman said Australian inmates Nicholas Langan and Edw...

Bali's Kerobokan prison JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia cut some time off the prison terms of 7,300 inmates, including two Australian women convicted of drug smuggling, a media report said Saturday. Holiday remissions are traditional in Indonesia for some inmates with good behavior, except those on death row or serving life in prison. The official Antara news agency quoted Patrialis Akbar, minister of the law and human rights, as saying 7,324 prisoners received sentence reductions ranging from 15 days to two months. Australians Schapelle Leigh Corby and Renae Lawrence, who are serving 20-year terms in Bali, had their sentences slashed by 45 days each, Antara reported. Corby, who was a former beauty student was convicted in May 2005 of smuggling 9 pounds (4.2 kilograms) of marijuana onto the resort island. Now 33, she asked for clemency in March, citing her poor mental state. Lawrence, also 33, is one of nine Australians found guilty in April 2005 of att...