Being poor is not a crime. Being white is not a crime. Being poor AND white is not a crime.
As far as not noticing 9 extra pounds, after the luggage was unloaded from the plane (the airline had put this bag, which was UNLOCKED, in a separate luggage area than most of the other luggages because of its bulkiness and weight), the bulkiness and weight of the bag caused her to struggle to lift it, and her brothers helped her to carry it. Your allegation prove absolutely nothing, you know nothing of the facts, yet you're absolutely convinced of her guilt! That's called PREJUDICE.
The Judeo-Christian concept of justice considers someone innocent until proven guilty - and a person is not proven guilty if there's any reasonable doubt as to their guilt.
There was a HUGE AMOUNT OF REASONABLE DOUBT in Schapelle Corby's case:
WEIGHING THE EVIDENCE
http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Weighing-the-evidence/2005/03/04/1109700677359.html?oneclick=true#
It started as a tropical holiday with family and friends, but if the worst scenario unfolds it will end in front of a firing squad. Philip Cornford uncovers many more questions than answers.
Brisbane Airport October 8, 2004
There is this moment in Schapelle Corby's life, before it plunged into chaos, when the world seemed wonderful, life was an exciting adventure, and what was to come was just not conceivable, beyond the imagining of any traveller. It was caught in a photograph, and it was the last time that a camera was to be kind to Corby.
The photograph was taken by her mother, Ros, after Corby, 27, and her three companions had been cleared to board QF501, the first of two flights which took her from a crisp Brisbane mid-spring dawn of Friday, October 8, to the sultry humidity of Bali. Instead of the luxury of an air-conditioned hotel, Corby was taken to a squalid prison, where her life is in the balance.
The picture shows four happy travellers: Katrina Richards, 17, a pre-school kindergarten teacher who works part-time at the Corby family fish and chip shop on the Gold Coast; Corby; Ally McComb, 25, a friend of four years and former flatmate; and Corby's brother, James, 16, at the time a year 11 student.
They are carefree, relieved. Getting to the airport on time was a rush. Now they are on their way to Bali, and the photograph records their elation.
"We were all so excited," McComb recalled. "We'd worked hard and saved all year. I stopped going out. It was my first trip to Bali."
For Richards, it was the first time she would be away from home. "I'd never flown before," she said. James had been to Bali once before, when he was nine, for the wedding of his sister, Mercedes, to a Balinese man.
Corby had visited Bali many times. She had married a Japanese man and worked in Japan in the hospitality industry for four years. The visits to Bali were stopovers on the way to and from Japan to see Mercedes, her elder sister. The last trip was in July 2000 when Corby came back to Australia after the break-up of her marriage.
She worked in the hospitality industry on the Gold Coast. In 2003 she did a part-time TAFE course in beauty therapy, finishing two of four modules. She skipped TAFE last year, working at the fish and chip shop and helping to care for her father, Michael, 55, a retired coalminer who has cancer.
Unknown to the travellers, other cameras watched their movements. These were the closed circuit television security cameras that monitor the Qantas check-in counters. At 5.33am they observed Corby and her companions when they presented their luggage: three suitcases and a boogie board in its carrying bag.
The boogie board belonged to Corby. She had packed it at her mother's Brisbane home, where the travellers slept the night. When they were about to leave, Ally McComb remembered the flippers she had borrowed from Corby. She gave them to Corby as the bags were loaded into her mother's car in the garage for the journey to the airport.
Corby unzipped the boogie board bag and put the flippers inside. McComb, Richards and James Corby testified in Denpasar Local Court on Thursday, the first day of the defence case, that the garage was brightly lit and they clearly saw that the yellow boogie board was the only object in the bag before the flippers were put in.
Twelve hours later, when the bag was opened at Ngurah Rai Airport in Denpasar, it was found to contain the boogie board, flippers - and 4.1 kilograms of top-quality hydroponic marijuana in two plastic bags, one inside the other, the size of a pillow case, placed in front of the boogie board next to the opening flap. It was the local customs officers' biggest marijuana intercept. Within 24 hours, the local media had dubbed Corby the "Ganja Queen". "They think she's beautiful," an interpreter said. "They're fascinated."
Shocked, at times tearful, Corby said she had never seen the marijuana before. She insisted it must have been inserted in her luggage during transit. So any video images showing the boogie board bag's size and shape while it was in Corby's care were important. Her defence lawyers asked for them. But the closed circuit TV at the Brisbane Qantas check-in was experiencing problems and any images recorded that morning were wiped 25 days later.
The weights of the bags were not individually recorded but together they totalled 65 kilograms. The four bags were recorded in Corby's name, the four tags clipped onto her boarding pass cover. The weight of these bags when they were checked in and their weight on arrival in Bali was crucial evidence to test Corby's claim. In Bali, customs and police ignored it.
Sydney Airport Later that morning
At 6am, the travellers flew to Sydney, arriving 90 minutes later. Their bags were taken by baggage handlers to Bay 5 at the Qantas domestic terminal, where they were loaded onto a trolley for transfer to the international terminal. When there was a full load for Australian Airlines flight AO7829 to Bali they were hauled two kilometres to Pier B at the international airport, where handlers scanned them to check they had been cleared for their scheduled flight. The three suitcases went through the security X-ray and onto a conveyor which delivered them to the loading bay in Pier C designated for AO7829.
The boogie board, however, was too big for the conveyor. It was put on a trolley, hauled to Pier C and then, at 8.18am, put into a baggage canister, DQF60342QF, which contained two of the other bags. Its loading sequence was 70, making it one of the last items put into the canister, placing it near the front. It would be one of the first bags taken out when the canister was unloaded in Bali.
The canister was closed by a canvas flap but not locked. It was held at Pier C for 97 minutes until half an hour before the Bali flight's departure.
All the baggage transfers in Brisbane, at Bay 5 in Sydney and at Piers B and C at the international terminal were monitored by closed-circuit cameras. There are no other security measures - all are big, open areas accessible to anyone with an "airside" security pass.
Not one of the security camera tapes recorded in these areas on the morning of October 8 was checked for images of the boogie board or for any unauthorised approach to the boogie board. The images recorded by the Qantas security cameras were wiped after a month, those on the cameras at Piers B and C, controlled by the Sydney Airports Corporation, after 72 hours. Thus Corby's lawyers were denied evidence which might have proved her innocence.
There are no inspections of bags or vehicles to check what staff with Aviation Security Identification Cards carry in and out of the airport.
Federal police say "it is a recognised criminal activity" for drug dealers to use innocent travellers as unsuspecting "mules". They have arrested baggage handlers at Sydney Airport for the offence. Drugs are inserted in luggage at one airport and a photograph of the target bag and its tag are emailed to the destination airport, where baggage handlers recover the drugs before the passenger collects the bag.
Corby's defence illuminates a terrifying reality which can have calamitous consequences. She faces death by a firing squad if convicted.
Ngurah Rai Airport, DenpasarThe holiday begins
After a seven-hour flight, they landed in Bali about 2.30pm local time, stepping out of an air-conditioned cocoon into what seemed like a steam bath.
Spirits were high. Now all the travellers had to do was collect their bags and take a taxi to their hotel, where they had pre-paid rooms and Mercedes would be waiting.
After their bags were unloaded from the canister they passed through an X-ray machine before moving onto the baggage carousel.
By the time Corby's party got through security and immigration, their bags were on the carousel. But not the boogie board. It had been set apart on the floor. Corby was struggling with her bag, so McComb told James to help his sister with the boogie board. Together, they took it to the customs counters where they would exit.
There they were stopped by a customs officer, Igusti Ngurah Nyoman Winata.
There are conflicting accounts of what happened next. Corby says she saw that people ahead had their bags on the counter and were opening them. So she put the boogie board on the counter and began to open it.
February 2005 Denpasar District Court
Winata was the first witness called by the prosecution when Corby's trial opened last month in the Denpasar District Court, the equivalent of an Australian Supreme Court. Winata testified that when he told Corby to open the bag, she instead opened a front pocket, saying "Nothing in there." He again ordered her to open the main flap. "The suspect [appeared] to panic. When I opened the bag a little, she stopped me and said, 'No.' I asked why. She answered, 'I have some ...' She looked confused."
Winata said he opened the bag and saw the flippers, the plastic bags with the marijuana and the boogie board. "I asked the suspect what was in the plastic bags. She said it was marijuana. I asked her, 'How do you know?' She said, 'I smelled it when you opened the bag."' A second customs officer supported his testimony.
Asked for her response in court, Corby got to her feet and angrily declared: "He's lying." In a strong voice, she said: "I opened the bag at the customs counter. He did not ask me. I opened it myself. I saw a plastic bag inside. It had been half opened." Corby made a gesture of recoiling. "Oh! The smell!" She repeated the denial several times.
Winata testified that Schapelle and James Corby were taken to an interview room, where the contents of the boogie bag were removed in front of Corby, who identified each item, including the drug bag, as belonging to her. Corby denied this several times. 'Never, ever. Never.'
James testified on Thursday that the customs officer had ordered him to carry the boogie board to the interview room while Corby remained outside. Corby had not been present when the customs officer ordered James to remove the drug bag, which he did. Corby said the bag was on the floor when she was taken into the room. She recoiled in shock.
When McComb was allowed to join them about half an hour later, she saw it on the floor. "Oh, my God," she said, appalled.
The marijuana was in a brand-named Space Bag, which has a nozzle through which air is extracted, compacting the load. Photographs taken by customs officers at the airport clearly show that this bag was inserted upside down into another Space Bag. Other photographs show customs officers handling the marijuana through the bottom of the internal bag.
Yet for some reason, the customs officers - when questioned by the defence - denied opening the boogie board bag after the X-ray machine detected the drugs, and denied inspecting the drugs and then zipping the bag shut again.
But Corby said the bag had been unzipped and zipped shut. She indicated how the two zips now met in the middle, whereas she always zipped it shut from right bottom to left bottom with a single zip.
Questioned by Corby's lawyers, Winata denied that customs officers had slit open the internal drug bag before Corby collected the boogie board. Her lawyers, who inspected the bag, said it had been partly cut open by a blunt instrument, perhaps a key.
When the bags were presented in court, four months after Corby's arrest, the internal bag was instantly noticeable because the bottom was sealed with black tape.
Asked to show the position of the drugs bag when he found it, Winata placed it upright in the outside bag, with the taped end down - reversing the positions shown by the customs photographs. Questioned by defence lawyers, he insisted he had not made a mistake.
Winata might not have been aware of the photographs. But the prosecutor, Ida Bagus Nyoman Wiswantanu, was. They are contained in the brief of evidence submitted by police. He did not question Winata's answers.
Holes in the argument
From the outset, the customs officers neglected four basic investigative procedures.
They handled the outside drug bag with unprotected hands, taking no precautions against contaminating the only item of evidence. They handled the bottom of the internal bag when they took out the marijuana.
First McComb and then Mercedes, when she got to the airport interview room, protested, demanding the bags be fingerprinted. They got the same reply. "Too late. Too many people have touched them." Mercedes said she replied: "Well, stop it right now." They laughed at her.
But Corby's lawyer, Lily Sri Rahaya Lubis, and her assistant, Vasu Rasiah, insist that most of the bag that actually contained the drugs was still clean because it had not been removed from the external bag. Only the bottom of the internal bag had been handled.
The fingerprint evidence is basic and important. If Corby's prints are on either bag, she is condemned. But if they are not, it is strong evidence for the defence, although not conclusive. Corby told the lawyers to press hard. "They won't find my fingerprints," she said.
In late December, almost three months after Corby's arrest and after repeated requests to have the evidence fingerprinted, the lawyers confronted the director of the Bali narcotics bureau, Senior Commissioner Bambang Sugiarto, who was in charge of the investigation.
Sugiarto had the bags brought to his office in Lubis's presence. "He confirmed the inside bag had not been removed. He said he would have it fingerprinted," Lubis said. But still it was not done.
She says the bag remained uncontaminated when it went to the prosecutor with other evidence on January 6.
But that changed on February 3, when Corby made her second court appearance. In front of the three judges, the internal drug bag was taken out of the external bag and handled freely by a number of court officials, including customs officer Winata, prosecutor Wiswantanu and assistant judge I Gusti Lanang Dauh.
At the close of court that day, the frustrated defence lawyers made a formal application to have the bags fingerprinted. Chief Judge Linton Sirait said he would consider it. "There's still plenty of time," he said. Two court sittings later, the lawyers are still waiting for his decision. Even now, they insist, it is not too late.
A second basic procedure was overlooked at the airport. Two hours after Corby was detained, customs were aware that there were four baggage tags in her name. The bags were only a few metres away, with Katrina Richards, who was anxiously guarding them.
The moment Corby claimed that the marijuana had been put into boogie board bag during transit, the weight of the bags became crucial evidence. If the bags weighed 4.1 kilograms - the weight of the marijuana - more in Bali than they did in Brisbane when they were checked in, then she was telling the truth. If the weights were the same, she was lying.
No attempt was made to search or weigh the bags, even though Corby demanded it. Later, when Corby had lawyers, it was too late. The bags had left the airport. The prosecution made no mention of this or of the failure to take fingerprints.
The third overlooked procedure is even more basic. The customs area at Ngurah Rai Airport is monitored by closed circuit cameras, which observed Corby's actions. They could corroborate or contradict her account. But the prosecutor said they were not checked. The defence has asked to see the tapes. The prosecutor said he would check to see if they were available.
There was a fourth failure. The X-ray machine that detected the marijuana is not equipped to take photographs. So no image was available to show the location of the marijuana in the boogie board bag before it got to customs.
The prosecution closed its case on February 17. It relies entirely on indisputable evidence that the marijuana was found in Corby's boogie board bag and on the contested testimony of two customs officers and two police officers about her actions and responses.
Winata's English-language proficiency was not established and will be challenged. Corby insists her responses were misunderstood. She says his English was not good and they had difficulty understanding each other. McComb, who also spoke to Winata that day, says the same.
Thursday, March 3
The defence begins Corby's lawyers have a number of points to make in the defence case, which opened on Thursday.
Why, if Corby was smuggling the drugs into Bali, did she not take the basic precaution of putting a lock on her boogie board bag?
Why did she not take another obvious precaution and put the drugs behind the boogie board, which would have concealed them from anyone opening the bag? Instead, they were in front of the boogie board, visible the moment the bag was opened.
Why did she not try to conceal the contents of the plastic bags by giving them a protective wrapping? Instead, the marijuana is easily visible through clear plastic.
Why would anyone risk a death sentence smuggling marijuana from Australia to Bali, where it will sell for much less than they could get in Australia? This is not only the biggest marijuana importation into Bali intercepted by customs. It is the only one.
Where is the police evidence that Corby or any of her family had connections with drug traffickers? Bali police say they investigated her "network" in Bali - meaning Mercedes and her husband - but found nothing incriminating.
The Australian Federal Police confirm Corby has no criminal record. Queensland police have no intelligence to connect her to drugs. The wholesale price for good quality hydroponic marijuana in Brisbane is $4000 for half a kilogram. Where did a woman who works in a fish and chip shop get the money to buy 4.1kilograms?
The defence will argue that the marijuana was put in the boogie board bag in Brisbane by a corrupt employee with "airside" access, most likely for pick-up in Sydney, where the street price is $65,000, by another corrupt worker with access. But the pick-up was somehow missed - tight security, watchful baggage handlers, bad timing - and the marijuana travelled on to Bali. Or it is possible, the defence will argue, that the drugs were placed in the wrong bag on the wrong flight.
They will argue that the positioning of the marijuana in front of the boogie board indicates it was inserted in haste during transit.
They will argue that whoever planted the drugs was responsible for changing the zipper arrangement, zipping the bag from both sides, meeting in the middle. And that when customs opened and shut the boogie board bag, they carefully repeated this procedure to conceal their intrusion.
The problem is the defence can establish a lot of doubt but no absolute proof. From the outset, prosecutor Wiswantanu insisted that the only way he would accept that Corby was innocent was proof - visual or by weight - that the marijuana was not in the boogie board bag when she checked it in at Brisbane Airport. Or visual evidence of someone putting the drugs in the boogie board bag.
Any chance of getting that evidence has gone. The security camera tapes which might have helped - the prosecution as well as the defence - have been wiped. The luggage was not weighed in Bali.
Qantas says the tapes were wiped on November 2, two weeks before they received a letter from the lawyers officially requesting copies. After the letter, dated November 16, Qantas got forensic experts to see if any images could be recovered but this was not successful.
But Corby's lawyers say their first request for the tapes was made on October 14, six days after Corby's arrest, and was repeated a number of times.
The lawyers say that in the last week of October, the Qantas security official told them the tapes were going to be destroyed within a week. On October 28, they sent the security official an email, noting this, and requesting copies of the tapes before they were wiped. This did not happen.
Prosecutor Wiswantanu is demanding the death penalty. He has successfully prosecuted six foreigners for importing drugs. One of them got the death penalty. Corby is fighting for her life.