A Schapelle Corby thought

I just had a though regarding the Schapelle Corby situation.

To the extent that (1) Indonesia has an "Asian" culture as I think of it, and (2) that I know anything about "Asian" culture (which is of course a great number of distinct cultures; I'm more familiar with Japanese and Chinese cultures, but am not an expert), I think Schapelle Corby's defense team handled her situation completely wrong.

First of all, I've heard that they spent a lot of effort appealing to emotion, encouraging Schapelle to appeal to the the judge directly, and such. It would be horrible if that did work, as the judge's duty is to arbitrate facts. (Mercy, if any, occurs during the sentencing phase, not the determination of guilt; her lawyers should have undestood this.) And they flew in some prisoner to present his hearsay, as opposed to flying in a baggage handler from Qantas (perhaps the one who took the giraffe(?) costume head from someone's luggage and drove around the tarmac wearing it, showing it off to his buddies), to testify, "Yeah, we get into people's luggage all the time..." That is, present direct evidence of porous security in regards to the sanctity of people's luggage. But all of this I've heard elsewhere.

What I **haven't** heard is this: It was a poor strategy to insult the police, the prosecutors, and the judge. All of these workers have to maintain "face" -- their reputation and public image. They have to show that they're doing their duty, doing their job. By questioning their competence, they have little choice but to dig in their heels and stubbornly go about their jobs -- to the bureaucratic letter. Insulting them backs them in to a corner, leaving them little "wiggle room" for leniency, as to do so might be seen as admitting an earlier error.

In contrast, a stronger -- and more diplomatically conducive -- solution would have been to acknowledging that the police, the prosecutors, and the judge are only doing their jobs. But, at the same time, she and her family are ashamed by this mistaken accusation, and that it pains both her and her family to have this burden upon their family's reputation. Then she (or her representatives) would ask: what can she and her family do to show that they respect and acknowledge Indonesia's drug laws, and would never dream of violating them? Perhaps agree to be held up as an example of how dangerous and scary it is to be caught with drugs; make a few public statements about how damaging drugs are, and how attentive the airport security is for finding the drugs in her luggage (just letting go the whole question of how they got there); and allowing herself to be deported.

And doing all of this before she was formally charged. Once the case goes to trial, it's too late.


But, no one asked me.


--TG