As the nation seems united in demanding the death sentence for the alleged perpetrators of the brutal rape and murder of a 14-year-old schoolgirl, law experts have turned to the textbook and asserted that a death sentence would serve little to no purpose as many of the suspects are still underage.

University of Indonesia law expert Ganjar Laksamana is worried that rage has made the public blind to the fact that seven of the 12 suspects are still minors, five being 17 years old and two being 16 years old.

“In the 2012 law on children’s trials, those considered underage or below 18 years old are divided into two categories. The first is those who can’t be asked to take responsibility for their actions at all and [second] is those between 8 and 17 years old, who can. However, the punishment [for the latter group] is still limited to half that of adults,” he told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

Therefore, Ganjar says, the Indonesian legal system does not utilize the death penalty for minors.

“Let’s say the maximum punishments allowed in the criminal code are the death sentence and life imprisonment. This means that the maximum prison sentence for minors is 15 years, which is for premeditated murder,” he said.

Yuyun, a Padang Ulak Tanding junior high school student, was found dead and badly bruised at the base of a five-meter ravine in the woods near Kasie Kasubun village.

Villagers found her body on April 4, three days after her disappearance, due to a strong stench. The girl was found naked, with her hands bound.

The police claim that Yuyun was raped and killed by 14 young men, some of whom were around her age. The men allegedly dragged her into the woods and tied her up before raping and beating her. Police have arrested 12 of the 14 suspects while two others are still at large.

Although the incident happened in early April, it is only now that it has become a nationwide issue and a trending topic on social media with more people now calling for the suspects to be sentenced to death.

“If you want to be really sadistic [and demand the death sentence for underage suspects] then you have to change the law first,” Ganjar said. “The main goal is to straighten out these kids’ behavior and killing them will not deter them [from committing another crime] because, how could they if they are dead?”

He said that the law on children’s trials was designed specifically for the sorts of minors that committed crimes.

“No matter how evil a kid is, that kid doesn’t really understand what he or she does. When the law was made, we asked psychiatrists and psychologists who said that if someone was not yet 18 years old, his or her [mental] development was not complete and thus he or she could not be punished too severely,” Ganjar said.

National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan) deputy chairwoman Yuniyanti Chuzaifah also said that the key to preventing such horrendous crimes was not death sentences but education.

While she understood that the crime had induced public rage, she said that the death sentence, especially for minors, was an inhumane punishment that would only hurt people’s dignity.

Yuniyanti added that the proper punishment for the underage suspects was an educational one that could help learn how the suspects were able to commit the crime in the first place.

Ganjar said the government should also ensure that the underage suspects were not subjected to treatment that could further fuel public rage, such as publication of their faces in mass media.

“I blame the people who decided to publish the faces of the suspects. No matter how much we hate them, that’s still unethical. We have to remember that under the law on children’s trials, a trial in which the suspect is still underage should be closed to the public. If the trial itself should be closed to the public, how can we publish the faces of the suspects for the public to see?” he said.
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