Michelle Leslie, a beautiful Aussie model with a multi-millionaire boyfriend, was arrested in Bali for possession of a couple of ecstasy pills. She faces 15 years in jail. I suspect the unduly harsh sentence for 2 ecstasy pills may be an over-the-top suck-in after the Schapelle Corby fallout.
Must show one is consistently tough.
However, unlike Schapelle Corby, Leslie has a great team to protect her from the media cannibals and other unscrupulous opportunistic vampires who would voraciously feed off the misery that a beautiful woman has unfortunately but stupidly placed herself into.
Her legal and PR teams have been superb. They effectively neutralise any avaricious media feeding, cut off the associated ‘circus’, ensure Leslie dorns dresses appropriate to the Indonesian environment which by a happy set of coincidences she could, not because she's a professional model of lingeries and swimsuits but because she is a covert convert of Islam.
And burly Aussie bodyguards ensured she hasn’t been ruthlessly and sickeningly mobbed by sensation-sucking ghouls and media hounds.
Wait, I have even read somewhere in an Aussie newspaper that there was a very recent release of an Indon man (from Bandung or Bogor) by the Bali court after only a very short spell in prison despite being caught with 15 ecstasy pills - good lord, that's 7.5 times more than poor Leslie had when she was apprended. And an Aussie journalist even went to the man’s home for an interview but was of course refused. This is a case of extremely useful legal precedence.
I admire the way the campaign for her case has been brilliantly executed. But then the defence became too clever for their own good.
They enlisted a psychiatrist Denny Thong, who is a member of the Bali Narcotic Board, to testify on her behalf. They had hoped to elicit from Dr Thong a medical confirmation that Leslie was addicted to Ritalin because she could then claim she became addicted after being treated for deficit hyperactivity disorder.
If the doctor testified that poor Leslie was addicted to Ritalin, they could appeal for a lighter sentence from the 15 years for ecstasy possession. Under Indonesian law, courts can grant leniency to drug addicts. The possible sentence would then drop from the draconian 15 years to only 3 months.
But that was not to be, and the news headlines screamed “Doctor scuppers Leslie's drug-addict defence”. The word scuppers in this context means ‘ruins’ or ‘destroys’.
What had occurred was that Dr Thong said Leslie used ecstasy, but was not addicted to it or Ritalin. Dr Thong had medically interviewed Leslie in Bali last month at her lawyers' request.
Dr Thong said that Leslie was not sick nor could be classified as an addict. In fact the doctor stated that Leslie herself had admitted to him she had used ecstasy, but was not addicted to it. Additionally, the doctor clarified that while one may use Ritalin, which is a lawful medication, one doesn’t get addicted to that medication.
Was this ‘scuppering’ the Leslie defence or was it professional presentation of medical facts?
However, Dr Thong opined that Leslie should not be victimised, as she had been carrying only a small number of pills. He said succinctly:
"Proportion wise, you take 20 tablets or 200 tablets or 2000 tablets - there should be some differentiation there. I am really hoping to be of help to her. My mission is to help these people who are using it, not trafficking it."
OK, not one to be staggered by this setback, the defence now suggests to police that the ecstasy might have been bought as a replacement for Leslie's Ritalin medication by a friend, a lassie by the name of 'Mia'.
Yeah right! Bought the wrong medication … eh? And by someone else too!
And would you believe how the gods favour Leslie, because suddenly the two Indon police officers who arrested the dear girl contradicted the original police report, in which Leslie had admitted to ownership of the drugs.
And truly, those deva's and devi's have emerged from the Temple of Pura Bersakih on Bali’s Gunung Agung to lend a helping hand with the defence, because those two cops also revealed that Leslie's friend, Mia, was on a list of wanted drug suspects, and was believed to have accompanied Leslie to the party but has since disappeared.
Hmmm!
The two policemen also confessed they did not check who else was in the car when Leslie was stopped.
Of course not, who would even check for other people in the car in which an apprended Leslie with the drugs was travelling with?
Then just in case anyone still hasn't yet frown on that missing ‘Mia’ as the true culprit, Bugik Sugiarto, the cop who found the ecstasy said he wasn’t aware that Mia was on the wanted list until much later.
;-)
But, could the missing mysterious ‘Mia’ be Ida Ratu Dalem Pingit otherwise known as Dewi Danu, Goddess of Lake Batur?
Related:
(1) A Tale of Two Beautiful Women
(2) Two Beautiful Aussies in Bali - The Story Continues
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