No More Tomorrows

by Corby, Schapelle

  Another big drama in our cell was when Sitti, the stinky lady, got possessed by a ghost. It scared the hell out of me. She came from a little village and had been sentenced to six months for stealing a bag of prawn crackers from her local market. As well as not showering, she didn’t brush her teeth and had bright-red infected gums with big yellow buck teeth. I’d never seen anything like it before – the teeth stuck out at a ninety-degree angle.

  The first night she was possessed, she was lying on the floor at the end of my bed, eating a banana. Suddenly she dropped the banana, closed her eyes and started speaking fast and loud in a weird voice. I leapt up away from her. All the other girls did, too, and we huddled together, crying. We were all freaked out. It went on for about five minutes. One girl got her Bible out and started praying for her. Suddenly Sitti snapped out of it. She stood up, said, ‘Where’s my banana?’ then picked it up and casually started eating it again, oblivious to the group of us huddled hysterically on the bed.

  It was terrifying. I really believed she’d been possessed. I didn’t sleep at all that night, scared it would happen again.

  The next morning it got worse. I was carrying a bucket of water to the cell when Sitti ran up and started carrying it with me. When we were putting the bucket down, water spilt and Sitti slipped. Suddenly she was spread-eagled beneath me, wearing no underpants. She started wildly clutching at my legs like a crazy woman, clawing at me. My pulse was racing, my heart slamming into my chest. ‘Let go! Don’t touch me, don’t touch me!’

  We were alone – no one to help. Things were a blur: her bright-red gums and yellow buck teeth fully exposed by her big monkey grin, still clutching, still clawing. I kicked and screamed and finally broke her grip. I ran like hell. The next day Merc bought her some underpants.

  She really terrified me and everyone else in the cell, especially when we started to find rocks hidden throughout the cell each night. We all feared she was crazy enough to bash our heads with them while we slept, so each night for weeks one of us would stay awake all night watching her.

  Eventually, however, Sitti and I became friends. Things changed one day after she’d been possessed for nearly twenty-four hours straight.

  I grabbed a bucket of water, walked over to her and pointed my finger, telling her to ‘stop it’. She didn’t. Then, as I was about to throw the water over her, other girls stopped me. But it snapped Sitti out of it. When I tried to get her moved to a cell without a ghost, she begged me on her hands and knees to let her stay with me. I gave her one last chance, and she didn’t get possessed again. I realised that she’d put on this crazy-lady act to scare off the girls who worked her like a slave because she was a poor peasant. Sitti had developed a wary fascination with me, as I was the only real-life Westerner she’d ever seen. But she’d seen white people on TV before and remembered an actress called Veronica. So, after we were friends, she called me Veronica.

  If I’d seen my fate in a crystal ball, I would have laughed. No one could live like that! But I was. I was living this hell, day and night. Even sleep was no escape. I had nightmares about the nightmares. I often woke up crying. But I was clinging to hope. This would be set right. It had to be! I was innocent. The judge had to see it, had to see it was not my crime. I couldn’t lose my life for a crime I didn’t commit. I had to convince the judge to let me go home. I had to!

  By the time I finally started court, I’d been living this dark hell for almost four months.

  11

  Chaos in the Courtroom

  I’m trying to get an image of the day in my head so I hopefully don’t become overwhelmed with emotion and fear – don’t want to be resembling a puffy-eyed, sweating beet root when the judge first sees me.

  Diary entry, 25 January 2005

  MY FIRST DAY IN COURT LOOMED LIKE A SEA OF terrifying dark shadows. I had no clue what was lurking, no idea what to expect. My lawyers had told me nothing. Everything terrified me: the court bus, the holding cell, the reporters and the cameras. But there was really one thing eclipsing all this, one thing freezing my heart: the bitter fight for my life.

  I’d been refusing to think of the gruesome possibilities of death by firing squad, or a lifetime or a long time in jail. I’d suppressed thoughts and fears of it. I’d denied it. But it was always there. It cast an unshakable dark shadow over every moment. It burdened my heart – always. Starting court just stirred it all up. It made me face the reality that my future might be grim, and provoked terrifying thoughts about the gritty details of being shot.

  It became a sort of morbid fascination. I thought about it; I asked other prisoners about it. Did they take you to a beach, draw a cross on your heart and shoot? Or did they just line you up against a wall and fire at you, like target practice at a shooting gallery? Did they cover your eyes with a blindfold or put a bag over your head, or turn you around to shoot you in the back? No one really seemed to know. It was often on my mind.

  I also thought about being locked up for years, losing my youth and growing old in prison, never having a normal life, never having a baby, never getting married. I wondered how old Mum would be when I got out. Would my dad still be alive?

  It all put terror in my heart. I often shook violently, curled up in my cell. I spent most of the night before my first day in court crying, shaking and endlessly putting on layers and layers of make-up. It was not out of vanity but out of fear. It was my nervous habit, my nod to nail-biting. For hours I sat transfixed. I stared into a little mirror and kept applying and re-applying my make-up, waiting for the scary day to break.

  Despite the fear, I was relieved that my case was finally being heard after months of just waiting and waiting and waiting. Every single day. I’d had a little glimmer of hope in my heart that I might be released that day, I might get to go home. But nothing changed: I was stuck in hell. Now at least there was action, and deep in my soul I believed I’d be OK. I’d always been taught that if you were good in life, life would be good to you. I was innocent. I wouldn’t get shot. I wouldn’t get slammed behind bars for years. It wouldn’t happen. Somehow I’d be OK. I’d get to go home. Something would break to back my story. Something would turn up. We were still pushing hard. We still had time.

  But on my first day in court, all I had was a chance to make a good impression on the judges. A chance to make them see I was not a drug addict, not a drug smuggler or dealer, but just a nice girl who came here on a holiday. I dressed in a pale-blue shirt and brown skirt that Mum had bought for me. I’d pressed them by putting them under my mattress and sitting on it – a useful trick all the girls in my cell used. I skipped breakfast, as I had no hope of keeping it down, and by 9.30 a.m., when my name was called, I was ready to start the grim day.

  ‘You’ll be OK, love. Be strong, it will be OK.’ Mum surprised me with a quick visit before court to help boost my spirits. She’d flown in the night before. We had ten precious minutes together talking through chicken wire before I was dragged away to get fingerprinted and handcuffed with nineteen other prisoners. It was so degrading and awful. I was cuffed to an old woman on heroin charges. We stood waiting in lines like a dysfunctional school class on a day’s excursion before we were filed out in cuffed couples to a waiting bus and a clamouring pack of photographers yelling, ‘Schapelle, Schapelle!’ I hated being singled out. I didn’t respond. I had to focus on getting on the bus. I had to hold it together. I didn’t want to cry any more.

  The whole day was startling. Nothing was like I’d expected or imagined. I got shock after shock after shock. Even the bus trip to court was hell. The driver was a maniac. He thought he was Michael Schumacher, speeding around the third-world roads like it was his final lap on a Formula 1 track. In the back, we were flung about like rag dolls. Most of us stood clinging to a handrail, and every time the crazy lunatic flew around a corner, we slammed hard into each other. Luckily, but quite bizarrely, we could slip our handcuffs off, which saved our wrists from being cut to shreds. By the time the maniac slammed the brakes on
at the court, we all looked like we’d done a round in the ring: our shirts dripping wet with sweat and everyone’s hair in a wild mess.

  But things were about to get worse. As I stepped off the bus, photographers, cameramen and reporters were all jostling, pushing and shoving to get their shots. They circled tightly around me, some only inches away, pushing microphones in my face and hurling questions.

  ‘You all right, Schapelle?’

  ‘How’re you feeling, Schapelle?’

  A guard kept pulling me along by yanking hard on my right arm. The scrum moved with me. Suddenly my left arm was jerked towards the ground. It hurt like hell. The cuff cut into my wrist. Then it hit me. I’d forgotten the poor old woman I was cuffed to. I quickly looked down and to my horror she was on the ground, looking up at me with such pain in her eyes. She was being dragged along and trampled by reporters. Her arm was awkwardly up in the air, connected to me. It was like she didn’t exist.

  As soon as we got to the holding cell behind the court, the guards undid our cuffs and she ran to the toilet. I went in to her. She was sobbing as she feebly dusted the dirt and footprints off the side of her body with her shaking, bleeding hands. I couldn’t say sorry enough. She just kept crying, covering her face with her hands and saying, ‘Malu, malu’ (I’m shy, I’m shy). Her wrists had deep cuff cuts, she was covered in scratches and her hair stood up on end. I felt devastated.

  The day kept going downhill. I was the first of twenty to be called into court. It was a shambles. There were people everywhere, cameras everywhere, reporters everywhere; people talking loudly on mobile phones, people eating, laughing, smoking and chatting; and people who looked like they’d just walked in off the beach. It was madness. It was nothing like I’d imagined. When I sat, reporters perched right at my feet, nearly on my feet, holding microphones so close that later when I was giving evidence I kept accidentally hitting them with my hands.

  It got worse still when the chief judge and his two assistant judges came in and called for the proceedings to start. The microphones came in closer, people in the public area were loudly getting translations, and all eyes were on me. It was hot, noisy chaos. It was hard to focus or to hear anything. I kept wanting the head judge to bang his hammer and shout ‘Order in the court!’ But he didn’t. He didn’t even move the bunch of cameramen standing right behind him, or ask people to stop talking on their mobile phones or put out their cigarettes. He didn’t stop all the people casually walking in and out the doors or hanging through the windows for a bit of a look. It was wild. It was a circus. Even Lily was still chatting away on her mobile phone.

  It hardly seemed like the right kind of atmosphere to be fighting for my life. I felt shaky and upset and kept biting my lip, fighting to hold it together.

  I looked anxiously around at Mum and Merc, who were sitting behind me, in the front row. They knew exactly how I was feeling; this was their life, too. Mum blew me a kiss. Just seeing them, their loving looks, their smiles saying ‘It’s OK’, helped me to relax a little. But even before it had all begun, tears were pouring down my face. It all hurt so much.

  I am so relieved to finally have it starting; the Indonesian courts never find anyone innocent because they can be sued, so I’m mentally preparing myself for a stay here: depressing.

  Diary entry, 27 January 2005

  I still couldn’t quite comprehend the bitter twist in my fate. Someone out there knew I was enduring this hell instead of them. How did they sleep? Didn’t they feel the guilt? Would they ever come forward? I wasn’t so naive as to believe they would, but I fantasised and even dreamt about it sometimes. But the reality was, I was in the hot seat taking the rap.

  It felt like a bad omen when my translator didn’t show up. Vasu suggested that we could use his secretary, Eka, who happened to be with him in court and who spoke English pretty well. She wasn’t a professionally trained translator, but the judges swore her in anyway just so we could start. It was another mistake.

  The next thirty minutes were tough. Tears just kept pouring down my face as I sat shocked and helplessly listening to the lies – lies that could help take away my life. In his indictment, the chief prosecutor claimed I’d acted suspiciously when I walked over to pick up my bag, that I’d refused to open it when I first got to customs and that I’d claimed the marijuana was mine. None of it was true. Not for the first time, I was left in no doubt the police would do whatever it took to send me down. They hadn’t managed to trick me into a signed confession, their stunt in the Polda visitors’ room had failed, so now they were just going to make it up.

  This was insane. How could they lie? My head was spinning. I felt sick and dizzy. This was my life. I could feel the cameras and microphones closing in on me, everyone staring at me, scrutinising me, waiting for my reaction. I felt like collapsing in tears or running to my mum for a hug. But I sat still and took some deep breaths as I desperately tried to stay in control. I focused straight a head, clasped my hands and prayed. When the judge asked if I understood, I answered, ‘I understand, but it’s not true.’ It was bullshit and a bitter taste of what would come.

  The prosecutor told the court I’d been charged with possession, which could lead to ten years in jail, and drug trafficking, which carried the death sentence. My heart squeezed even tighter.

  When the devastating thirty minutes were over, I didn’t want to stand up. I was full of terror and fighting for my life, but in this moment it was sweat marks down my bum that panicked me. It was so hot. I could feel my shirt completely glued to my soaking back and beads of sweat dripping from the bend in my knees. What if my dark brown skirt was covered in sweaty patches from the little plastic chair? There were so many people right behind me who’d see! I finally stood up when the perplexed guards became impatient. Every week after that, Merc put a towel down on the chair for me before I arrived.

  I was taken back to the tiny holding cell around the back. All twenty of us were crammed in like monkeys, with people crouched down on the concrete floor or leaning up against the bars or walls. The air was hot and sticky with a hazy blue hue from all the cigarette smoke. Everyone was smoking. It was hard to breathe and my eyes were badly irritated, red and sore. In the corner was the dirty, stinky cell toilet, which became my hideout from prying cameras in the weeks ahead. I ended up spending so much time shut in there that Mum started coming in early and scrubbing it clean for me.

  It would be another week before I went to court again, as my case was heard on only one day a week. This meant it would drag on for months, but at least it would give us more time to get evidence.

  So hard to concentrate: the courtroom is covered with cameras, reporters, TV cameras sitting on the floor in the middle of the court, and when I speak all these microphones are placed down on the table in front of me, and there’s a window behind me with people speaking in Indonesian. Cameramen calling ‘Corby, Corby’ in my ear; as I turn, they snap the camera. Couldn’t they have a little respect? I have to be completely aware and with no distractions: I am on trial for my life! Don’t they understand?

  Diary entry, 3 February 2005

  For the next two weeks, the prosecution witnesses backed up the lies in the indictment with their own lies. It was shattering. If they’d done their jobs properly in the first place, I wouldn’t have been fighting for my life. But it was obvious that with no secondary evidence from the police’s botched non-investigation, their lying testimonies were going to be used instead.

  First up was Gusti Winata, who was the customs officer who’d originally asked James whether the bag was his. He testified that he’d asked me to open my boogie-board bag but I’d refused and said, ‘Nothing in there.’

  ‘She was nervous, then I opened it myself. My hand was stopped and she said, “No.” When I opened it a bit, she yelled, “No!”

  ‘I asked, “Why?”

  ‘She said, “I have some . . .” and looked confused. I asked the suspect what was in the plastic bags. She said, “That’s marijuana.�
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  ‘I asked her, “How do you know?”

  ‘She said, “I smelt it when you opened the bag.”’

  I was trembling with fury and shook my head in utter disbelief. I focused ahead and clasped my shaky hands tightly in my lap. When the judge asked if I agreed, I said, ‘No, he’s lying.’

  He then asked me to point out what was untrue.

  ‘Well, firstly he didn’t ask me to open the bag. He just asked whose bag it was. I opened the bag, and I don’t remember saying anything or hitting anyone’s hand. I opened the bag and then I closed it. I was scared. I didn’t know what it was. Then when I closed my boogie-board bag up, a strong smell came out. I was very scared; I didn’t know what was going on.’

  The second customs officer, Komang Gelgel, said I looked suspicious as I went to collect my bag, and then gave the incredible and damning evidence that I had admitted owning the marijuana. ‘She said, “This is mine, I own it.”’

  My response to this was: ‘I was not suspicious-looking or acting restless. I was happy because I was on a holiday and I love Bali. I open it, I lift it up, and I’m surprised: there’s a plastic bag half-open . . . And I close it up; I can smell it. I never at any stage stated that that marijuana belonged to me. Never, ever, have I stated that.’

  It was my word against theirs. But there was one bit of evidence I thought might speak louder than words. When I had arrived at customs, the inner plastic bag had been slashed, exposing the marijuana through the unzipped outer bag. Bits of it were even sticking out. This was proof that the bag had been tampered with. Surely the judges’ legal brains could plainly see that. I would not have cut it open, whether I put it in or not. Someone had tampered with the bag.