Crowe jumps to Corby defence

13:48 AEST Fri Apr 22 2005

Actor Russell Crowe has appealed to the Australian government to act to save Schapelle Corby from life in jail over what he says is a questionable charge.

Crowe, who owns a property at Nana Glen on the mid-north NSW coast not far from the hippie capital Nimbin, also said it was time to decriminalise marijuana, as the current system was jeopardising too many lives.

The 41-year-old Oscar award winning actor jumped to the defence of the Gold Coast woman, who faces life imprisonment if convicted of smuggling more than 4kg of cannabis into Bali's Denpasar airport in her body board bag last October.

Photographs of the distraught 27-year-old were all over the front pages of Friday's newspapers after Indonesian prosecutors announced they would seek life imprisonment rather than the death penalty.

Crowe called on Prime Minister John Howard to act, saying it was ridiculous that Corby could rot away in prison for the rest of her life.

"When there is such doubt, how can we, as a country, stand by and let a young lady, as an Australian, rot away in a foreign prison?" he told the John Laws Radio Program.

"That is ridiculous.

"We just gave Indonesia how many hundreds of millions of dollars in tsunami relief? We're not disrespecting your (Indonesia's) laws or anything but in our minds we think there is a massive doubt here."

Crowe said the government should request Corby be brought back to Australia to face trial under our judicial system.

"The photographs of Schapelle Corby broke my heart," he said.

"The first thing I thought this morning was, like, how can I get Johnny Howard on the phone and say look, what are you gonna do, mate, what are you gonna do? - that's ridiculous, what if it was your daughter?

"You know it as well as I do - all of these things, international diplomacy, can be moved to meet the needs of the individual country in that time."

"The due process of Indonesian law we have to respect from an international relations point of view but from my individual point of view, looking at it, it's like it's bullshit, let's deal with it."

Prosecutors have asked a three-judge panel to convict the 27-year-old and jail her for the rest of her life.

Next Thursday, it will be the turn of the defence to ask that she be acquitted. Corby might make her own personal plea.

After that the judges will bring down their verdict, possibly next month.

Balinese lawyer Lily Lubis said the 27-year-old defendant is trying to come to grips with the prosecutor's demand for a life sentence.

"She thinks all of this is only some kind of play, some kind of drama," Lubis said after visiting her Gold Coast client in Denpasar' s Kerobokan Prison.

The lawyer described Corby as a "nervous wreck" who can sleep only with the help of medication.

Lubis said the defence team would ask the court to permit Corby to make a statement during its summing up next week, but only if she was strong enough.

Corby broke down and said her life was over after Prosecutor Ida Bagus Wiswantanu argued in the Denpasar District Court that she should be found "officially and convincingly guilty" of attempting to smuggle 4.1kg of marijuana into Bali last year.

Wiswantanu said the former beauty student's actions threatened to make Bali look like a drug haven and could have destroyed the lives of thousands of young Balinese.

Lubis said there was "strong evidence" to back Corby's claim that she was the innocent stooge of a drug gang operating at Australian airports.

The defence claims that marijuana found in Corby's luggage at Denpasar airport was put there after she had boarded a flight to Bali.

Lubis is worried that Corby is trying to suppress her grief after breaking down in a holding cell following the trial.

"She is not crying and is trying to look tough," she said.

"I prefer her to cry, to be angry, to let out her emotions, because if she keeps it inside I'm afraid she will break down or become depressed."

Lubis said Corby had been encouraged by Chief Judge Linton Sirait's efforts to soothe her by saying the prosecutor's demand did not represent the end of the legal process.

Latest News: Corby delivers emotion-charged last plea.

With her voice breaking, Schapelle Corby has made a last-ditch plea to three Indonesian judges to look to God and let her go free, claiming she's an innocent victim who has been punished enough. More Info >>