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Indonesia The Administration of Criminal Justice
The prosecutory function rested with the attorney
general,
who held the position of supreme public prosecutor. The
attorney
general occupied a cabinet-level post separate from that
of the
minister of justice, both of whom reported directly to the
president. In 1992 the Attorney General's Office included
27
provincial-level prosecutors' offices and 296 district
prosecutors' offices.
The public prosecutor's principal functions were to
examine
charges of felonious conduct or misdemeanors brought by
individuals or other parties, and then either to dismiss a
charge
or to refer it for trial to the state court having
jurisdiction.
The prosecutor's office was also responsible for
presenting the
case against the accused in court and for executing the
sentence
of the court.
The matter of control over the conduct of the
preliminary
investigation has had a history of contention between the
prosecuting authorities and the police going back to the
late
1940s and early 1950s. Practice under the old code of
criminal
procedure evidently rested on working agreements between
the two
services, under which the police, in principle, conducted
primary
investigations but deferred to the prosecutor whenever the
latter
asked to undertake the investigation. Under the new code
of
criminal procedure, a clear division was made between the
investigatory function, which was given solely to the
police, and
the prosecution function, which remained with the
prosecutor's
office. The only exception was in the case of "special
crimes," a
category which was not further defined but which was
believed to
be reserved for unusually sensitive cases such as
espionage and
subversion, in which the prosecutor could also take a role
in the
investigation. Continuing tension between the prosecutor
and the
police was evident during debate over a new prosecution
service
law in 1991. The law as passed gave the attorney general
the
power to conduct limited investigations in cases that were
determined to be incomplete. The 1991 law also established
the
positions of deputy attorney general and a sixth associate
attorney general responsible for civil cases and
administrative
affairs.
The court system comprised four branches: general
courts,
religious courts, military courts, and administrative
courts
(see The Judiciary
, ch. 4). In the early 1990s, all criminal
cases
(except those involving ABRI personnel) were tried in the
general
courts. The new criminal procedure code set forth rules
for
establishing in which court a case must be tried, should
military
and general court jurisdiction combine or overlap.
Since the late 1960s, the Suharto government, with the
strong
support of the legal profession, made efforts to ensure
the
independence of the judiciary. The Basic Law on the
Judiciary
Number 14 (1970) prohibited all interference in judicial
matters
by persons outside the judiciary, a prohibition that in
principle
was also contained in the elucidation of the judicial
articles of
the constitution. The executive branch exercised some
measure of
influence over judges through the control exercised by the
minister of justice over the appointment, training,
promotion,
and transfer of judges.
The president was empowered to grant amnesty or special
dispensation to convicted persons. This power was used on
several
occasions to declare general amnesties--in 1980, for
example, for
suspected PKI members imprisoned on Buru Island. The
president
also could grant individual amnesty and clemency powers
and was
the final appeal authority for those sentenced to death.
Under
the new criminal procedures code, cases on which final
judgment
had been rendered could be opened for reconsideration
should new
evidence surface.
Data as of November 1992
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