T

he staggering increase in capital punishment verdicts last year has fueled criticism of Indonesia’s justice system, with activists accusing judges of ignoring basic human rights and underlining the ineffectiveness of the death penalty in reducing crime.

As many as 80 death sentences were meted out by Indonesian judges in 2019, a 66 percent increase from 48 such sentences in 2018, according to an annual report by Amnesty International published this week.

Sixty of the sentences were handed down for drug-related crimes, while serious criminal offenses such as terrorism, murder and sexual abuse against children account for the rest.

Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR) executive director Erasmus Napitupulu said the jump in death sentences was disconcerting, because it seemed that lower court judges were at ease with doling out the most severe kind of punishment.

This has led critics like him to believe that the courts might have rushed through the legal process.

“The increase in verdicts may have occurred because convicts were subject to an unfair trial or weren’t given access to legal assistance,” Erasmus said during a virtual press conference on Tuesday.

Several contentious precedents could support his allegations.

In 2013, then-16-year-old Yusman Telaumbanua was sentenced to death by judges at the Gunungsitoli Court in North Sumatra for three counts of homicide.

The case caught the attention of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), which argued that Yusman was undeserving of the death penalty because he was still a minor.

The teen was exonerated after Kontras filed a case review with the Supreme Court that was granted. Yusman left Gunungsitoli prison in 2017 after his sentence was commuted.

Pakistani drug convict Zulfiqar Ali was not as fortunate.

Ali was handed the death sentence in 2005 in what observers called an unfair trial that saw him go to court without legal counsel. He passed away in jail in 2018 after struggling with an undisclosed illness and before he was due to be executed.

With such examples of questionable decisions passed in the lower courts, Erasmus said, he feared that some of these judges might have been emboldened to repeat such mistakes in 2019, and called on them to revisit the principle of fairness.

“Reassessing those verdicts will increase public faith in the country’s justice system,” he said.

In addition to making hasty decisions in court, judges were also accused of violating the “right to life” principle stipulated in Article 14 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Indonesia ratified in 2005.

Erasmus also questioned the tendency to dole out such hefty sentences, even as there continues to be little proof that capital punishment was effective in deterring crime.

The number of drug-related crimes in Indonesia has increased over time, despite the fact that most death sentences were meted against drug convicts, according to Statistics Indonesia (BPS). Based on 2019 BPS data, the number of drug-related crimes in the country increased from 19,280 cases in 2014 to 39,588 cases in 2018.

“Based just on those facts, I don’t think that doling out death sentences is still appropriate in this country,” the ICJR leader said.

Many countries have abandoned such practices, albeit gradually, said Justitia Veda, a campaigner at Amnesty International Indonesia.

According to the AI report, the number of capital punishment verdicts globally declined 8.8 percent from 2,531 cases in 2018 to 2,307 in 2019.

Justitia said she failed to comprehend why Indonesian judges seemed eager to hand out more death sentences amidst the declining global trend, especially when the option is limited only to those who commit serious felonies.

Supreme Court spokesman Abdullah rejected claims that lower court judges were doling out unfair sentences to convicts, arguing that they were bound to a strict ethics code and were expected to uphold fairness any decision.

Capital punishment, he added, would remain available for them to use so long as it is stipulated in the country’s prevailing laws.

Currently, there are 13 laws that allow judges to mete out death sentences, including the Criminal Code, the 2003 Terrorism Law and the 2009 Narcotics Law.

“If convicts are dissatisfied with their verdicts, they can file for a case review with the Supreme Court so the justices there may commute their sentences,” Abdullah told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

“All legal proceedings have their own processes that the public must abide by.”