Asia-Pacific

In 2006, Hanky Gunawan, an Indonesian national, was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment by a district court in Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, for producing and distributing large quantities of ecstasy. Both the prosecution and Mr Gunawan appealed to the provincial high court, and his sentence was increased to 18 years. The prosecution appealed again, this time to the Supreme Court, objecting to the perceived leniency of the sentence. In 2010, the Court sentenced him to death by firing squad. However, the following year, the Court reopened the case and a new panel of judges re-examined it. The new panel reinstated the first instance sentence of 15 years, thereby saving Gunawan from death. It held that the death penalty was unconstitutional because the Constitution provided an absolute right to life. By initially imposing the death penalty, then, the Supreme Court had made a judicial error. To add weight to this finding, the new panel also pointed to Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ('Everyone has the right to life...') and Article 4 of Indonesia's domestic Human Rights Law, which provides the same right.