It seems like a familiar story -- a family reduced to near-hysterics in the long-running campaign to save their daughter, now tearfully denouncing a judge who seems deaf to their pleas, and a country riveted by the spectacle. Except it's happening now, halfway around the world, and the girl in question is languishing not in a hospice but in an Indonesian jail.
Australia has apparently gone into journalistic spasms over the conviction Thursday of Schapelle Corby, a girl in her mid-20s who was caught entering Bali with her boogie board case and luggage, in which customs authorities found a few kilos of marijuana. Some stray facts inflaming the Australian public and press: during the trial, a scandal involving Australian baggage handlers in a drug-smuggling scheme became public; the judge hearing Corby's case had a 100% record of convictions in drug cases; and the baggage-handler information was largely excluded from evidence in Corby's trial.
A media note on the case: unlike American practice, the girl at the center of this story is not routinely referred to by her first name. Maybe it's because "Schapelle" is a hard-to-pronounce name (like Schiavo?), although the story has received blanket coverage in Aussie media for months. Maybe it's because names that end in -y or -ie are remarkably appealing to Aussies, who tend to give everyone and everything nicknames with such endings (Tasmania is routinely referred to as "Tassie"). Maybe it's because Schapelle is longer than Corby, and in headlines, brevity always wins.
A non-media note: Corby sits, awaiting appeals, in the same Indonesian jail housing a cleric convicted of involvement in the Bali disco bombing. In 2002, that bombing killed 88 Australians. Per capita, that means Australia lost a greater percentage of its population in that one strike than the US did on 9/11. His sentence is two years. Corby's is 20 years.
Bill Bennett should be proud.
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