In Limbo: Sakak bin Jumak, the Death Penalty and Criminal Injustice in Indonesia.

In Indonesia, prisoners condemned to death can be left in legal limbo for years. After his conviction for murder in 1995, Sakak bin Jumak sat on death row for more than a quarter of a century before falling physically and mentally ill and dying there. The marginalisation of law is pervasive at each stage of the criminal process that leads to implementation of the death penalty in Indonesia. Like Sakak, many inmates reach death row only after a series of abuses of their legal rights. Using Sakak's experience as case study, this article investigates a series of rights that are, in principle, available at Indonesian law to defendants facing arrest, trial, imprisonment, and the clemency process. By investigating the ways these rights are dealt with in practice, this article aims to offer insight into some of the many legal and institutional problems that render Indonesia's criminal justice system as a whole, and its death penalty regime in particular, dysfunctional. It concludes by briefly considering reforms that, while facing many obstacles to implementation, could encourage greater observance of these rights, make executions less common, and protect others from being lost on death row, as was Sakak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]