No More Tomorrows (22 page)

Diary entry, 11 February 2005

When the judge asked Mr Astawa whether fingerprints were necessary in the Corby case, he said, ‘No.’ When he asked the second officer, Wayan Suwita, why no fingerprints had been taken, he answered, ‘In this case, the criminal perpetrator was caught red-handed by the customs officers at the airport. We knew it was marijuana, so it wasn’t necessary.’ The judge must have agreed, as hedenied our continued requests to have the inner bag fingerprinted, though by now it was contaminated anyway. He also turned down our requests to have the marijuana DNA tested to find out its origin.

I couldn’t understand how a judge would not want a full investigation when a life was at stake. Didn’t they want every bit of information possible before giving their verdict? Before deciding on someone’s life? And wasn’t I entitled to a fair trial to fight for my life? I could see as clearly as everyone else that the evidence against me was strong. It was in my bag. But didn’t I have the right to a proper investigation just in case I was telling the truth? This court could impose a death sentence. Surely taking finger prints or looking at CCTV footage wasn’t asking too much. Wouldn’t it have been standard procedure in any other court in the world?

It was all so Mickey Mouse, the whole process – from the bungled non-investigation by the police and the prosecutors to the judges’ lack of interest in the lack of investigation, to the disruptive chaos in the courtroom. It was an ironic twist that this casual, disruptive, laid back court, which appeared to be far less imposing than the usual sterile courtroom with its wigs, gowns and mahogany benches, was far deadlier. Its sentences were the harshest in the world. I felt this every single second that I sat there. But it felt like no one else got it. It felt like there was no respect for the fact I was on trial for my life.

It had been a particularly gruelling and infuriating day, and I really didn’t want to go back to Kerobokan. I’d simply had enough, enough of this hell and enough of this bullshit justice system. I was tired of helplessly watching these people bang nails into my coffin with their lies, their destruction of evidence and their lack of investigation. I didn’t need any more proof of this unfair, unjust system, but I got it on the way home when a guy sitting next to me told me he’d just been sentenced to nine years for murder. With remissions, he’d be out in five!

I am so tired of this place; I didn’t want to get locked up behind that cement wall again with the only thing to pass time being walking down the muddy rocky path to collect my water. I needed to release some anger, so, silly me, I punched the inside door of the police van. The guard in front yelled to me, ‘You got a problem?’

My reply: ‘Yeah, I’ve got a problem – fuck you!’ He was really angry and kept yelling repeatedly, ‘You got a problem with me?’

My reply again was ‘Fuck you.’

The van stopped, he slammed open our cage door and was still yelling at me. I sat there for a bit to calm down, then I said sorry and got out, the other prisoners getting out after me. Once back inside the prison I told the guard, ‘I’m so sorry.’ He accepted it and patted me on the back and held my hand.

I need to invest in a boxing bag. Keep me out of trouble.

Diary entry, 11 February 2005

The stress of life in jail and the pressure of court were really affecting me. I was losing weight, throwing up often and wildly swinging from wall-smashing fury to deep black depression. Some days I simply couldn’t get out of bed. But I was still trying as hard as I could to be patient, to be positive, to be hopeful, for my family’s sake. They were all as stressed out as me.

I will be coming home. I am strong, I have faith, I have support, I have a lot of love in my heart. I am coming home.

Diary entry, 11 February 2005

I started to spend more time at church and more time with Eddie, the former Buddhist who’d been done for possession of a few tablets of Ecstasy. He was still able to turn my tears into a smile, and church somehow started helping lift the burden a little. I’d always heard that people turned to religion in a crisis, used it as a crutch, and I could see why, as it was really helping to give me a sense that this nightmare was happening for a reason: there was a purpose for it. That was easier to believe than thinking I was now living in hell for no reason other than just plain bad luck. And if there was a God who put me here, He could also get me out!

I feel that God has all this planned and He is in control of my fate/destiny/future. So I am not scared; I’m just really finding it hard to come to grips with the meaning of patience!

Diary entry, 17 February 2005

Ironically, my patience was often tested by Christians coming to the jail church and sneakily taking photos of me. I’d get a sixth sense that someone was taking a shot, turn, and see them frantically trying to stash the camera. Regularly, it was visiting Christians being very un-Christian when they were permitted in on Sundays. People coming to visits were also sneakily snapping pictures to sell and fill their pockets.

But it wasn’t always covert and sneaky; sometimes it was blatantly in my face. For instance, one afternoon just after lock-up, the guards escorted a huge bunch of photographers and reporters right into my cell. I’m sure the guards were well paid for their trouble.

At 5.30 p.m., the guards came in with twenty other people – reporters and photographers! All of them were saying, ‘Corby, Corby.’ They came in, took a few shots of my things, my section of the cell, how I live here – they also told me how to sit on my bed for some shots. How embarrassing! I didn’t resist. I did as they said. They hung around for fifteen minutes. I was so embarrassed at all these people shooting their cameras at me. The other girls in the cell were running around trying to hide, but there is nowhere so they covered their faces with anything they could find: towel, bucket, one even put on her Muslim veil! Reporters were asking them questions about me, for example: What’s it like to live with Corby? How do you all communicate with Corby? Does she speak Indonesian? The girls were yelling out,
‘Corby tidak tau!’
(I don’t know Corby!) How can I keep a straight face with all these crazies around me?

Diary entry, 16 February 2005

At court the media was intensifying, too, with more cameras in my face every week. It was making my court days more stressful, knowing everything I said or did would be filmed from the moment I stepped off the sardine bus. Some days I’d arrive at court already feeling shaky and upset from something horrific I’d seen at Kerobokan and would then have to face a media scrum firing questions.

This morning as I waited at Kerobokan to be taken to court there was a fight between two guys. One had a plank of wood and was bashing the other guy. The other guy was in bad shape. All his face was cut open and bleeding.

Diary entry, 17 February 2005

As soon as I climbed off the bus, still feeling a bit shaken from the fight, a pack of photographers and reporters tightly circled, pushing, shoving and shouting questions. I was starting to get badly bruised each week and my wrists were torn by the cuffs as I was dragged through the jostling scrum to the holding cell, where I would escape to the toilet. But today there was no escape.

Although the little cell was already crammed with twenty of us prisoners, it was suddenly full to the rafters when a guard let in the pack of reporters and photographers. I ran into the toilet, but they still got shots by holding their cameras up above the door. I couldn’t believe it when I looked up and saw all the cameras. A second guard, the one that I’d let my anger out on the week before, came to my rescue. He yelled at all the photographers to get out and was furious at the other guard for letting them in.

In the hot seat that day was the last prosecution witness, the senior customs officer, who answered questions about airport operations. Incredibly, when the prosecutor put the plastic bag on display again, much of the marijuana had vanished.

When the prosecutor opened the boogie-board bag to show the plastic bag, it almost seemed that the evidence was missing. The prosecutor had to dig around to find it . . . the evidence is becoming less and less each time we enter the court. Hopefully by the end of this, on my last trial day, there will be only a few crumbs left, then my lawyers can say, ‘Where did you get a figure of 4.2 kilograms from? The scales must have been out!’

Diary entry, 17 February 2005

While we were in court, there was a noisy commotion going on outside. People were holding handmade posters with my name written on them, and instinctively I thought they were supporters. But my translator, Eka, told me, ‘No, Schapelle, they’re here to support the
death sentence
 . . . The signs say
kill
you!’ I felt sick. I swung around and saw a sign with blood dripping from an axe in the window behind me. It was chilling.

It was the first day the Indonesian anti-drug protest group GRANAT had turned up, and Mum was upset and furious. ‘You have already found my daughter guilty, and she is
innocent!
’ she screamed. ‘Why can’t you be saying try to find evidence? No one seems to be trying to find who put the bloody stuff in the bag. They don’t care!’

The protesters just laughed at my mum, provoking her to throw water on them, but they still refused to go away. As I was being walked back to the holding cell later on, I started panicking as they surrounded me, thinking one of them might have a gun. But once inside the cell, I was quickly distracted from my fear when four men started laying into a guy who’d just been sentenced to five years’ jail for being caught with a joint. I didn’t know why and didn’t ask why they were beating him, but it was pretty sad and pathetic.

The next day in court would be the start of my defence case, and I was scared. We still had nothing. I had no evidence from Australia, no evidence in Bali, and my lawyers were really starting to worry Merc and me. I was never briefed on what would happen in court, never given any idea of a strategy. Lily often cried in court, but rarely stood up to question the prosecution witnesses.
Come on, Lily – help me. Stop crying, do your job!
I often silently willed her. This was my life. We had to fight. I wanted her to leap up and counter their lies, challenge their bullshit. But she rarely did. Most of the time she just sat quietly watching and sending SMS messages on her phone. She was out of her depth. She’d brought Erwin Siregar in to help, but Lily was lead counsel.

Vasu sat on the public bench endlessly scribbling on scraps of paper and passing them to Lily. He’d told me before the first day in court that he couldn’t sit on the bench with Lily because he was Sri Lankan – nothing to do with the fact he was an engineer. At that point, I still believed he was a lawyer: most of the Australian papers were calling him a lawyer, and I guess he’d started believing it, too. Vasu was my case coordinator, but he’d never actually worked on any other legal case in court.

I needed help. We were due to start our defence case, and all we had were the testimonies of me and my travel mates. I desperately needed something to break, something to fall from the sky!

12

Ron and Robin – the Dynamic Duo

W
HEN
I
FIRST HEARD
I
HAD A MILLIONAIRE
‘
WHITE
knight’ about to gallop into town and rescue me from a fate that could be death, I was at first baffled.
Mad Ron? Isn’t he the phone guy? How can he help? Oh, I suppose he’s rich and has a big-shot lawyer to bring over,
I thought. But why help me, why spend his time and money on me? What did he want in return? I joked to Merc that maybe he wanted me to model phones for him when I got back home . . . Yeah, I could do that!

I don’t like thinking bad things about people, but it’s hard to recall any of the initial good feelings I had about Ron Bakir and Robin Tampoe. My ‘white knight’ did indeed become my ‘black knight’ because of the sorry way his and Robin’s involvement unravelled: the deceptions, the contracts we were pressured to sign but publicly deny, the lies they told and the hungry media they loved to feed, often with misinformation and most often without my OK or even my knowledge.

It didn’t matter if something wasn’t true; they’d still push a line if they felt like it. Like when Ron kept telling the press I was suicidal. Not only was it untrue and sending out the wrong message – why kill myself if I’m innocent? – but it was hurting my family, especially my mum. Merc and I begged him to stop, but he didn’t, and Mum got so upset that, despite us assuring her I was OK, she flew over to check for herself.