Maria Exposto escapes death penalty in drug case
SYDNEY grandmother Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto has sensationally escaped the death penalty after a Malaysian court found her not guilty of drug trafficking.
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SYDNEY grandmother Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto has sensationally escaped the death penalty after a Malaysian court today found her not guilty of drug trafficking.
The 54-year-old mother of three and grandmother from Sydney’s west was calm as the not guilty verdict was handed down in the Shah Alam High Court in Kuala Lumpur.
The court accepted her case, that she had been conned by an online love scam and had no idea the drugs were in her bag, setting her free and into the arms of her family who were in court.
Justice Ghazali Cha said the defence had raised reasonable doubt and that Exposto had let her love for a man she met online overshadow everything else, including her own family and future.
“The conclusion is I agree that the accused did not know about the drugs concealed in the bag and the accused is an innocent carrier. Next I am satisfied that the accused defence is not an afterthought,” Justice Cha said in his judgment.
And he said that the prosecution had failed to provide any CCTV images of the arrest.
Exposto, from Sydney’s west, had faced one charge of drug trafficking under Malaysia’s harsh Dangerous Drugs Act, which carries the mandatory death penalty for anyone convicted of trafficking more than 50 grams of illegal drugs.
Two members of Exposto’s Sydney family were in court for the verdict, along with a representative from the Australian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur and a legal team of five lawyers. The family appeared calm as the verdict was read out.
After the verdict, prosecutors said she would be referred to Immigration. Three Immigration officers were in the court for the decision.
The Judge ordered Exposto to be referred to Immigration for the purposes of deportation as her passport had expired.
Shortly after the verdict a teary Exposto was allowed to call family members in Australia to relay the good news after her lawyer sought permission for her to use a mobile phone.
Exposto was mobbed by media as she was led out of the court, saying “Yes, I’m innocent”.
Exposto’s son Peter, who was in the court, expressed happiness the ordeal was over.
Prosecutor Nadiah Isa said the prosecution intends to appeal the acquittal and that the Prosecution now has 14 days in which to lodge a notice of appeal, during which time Exposto would remain in Immigration detention.
Under Malaysian law the prosecution can appeal an acquittal, meaning Exposto now faces an anxious two-week wait to see if she will be finally freed or face further court hearings.
TEARS AND CHRISTMAS GREETINGS BEFORE VERDICT
Exposto, wearing a white blouse, black blazer and black trousers, was allowed a few moments with her family in court before proceedings got underway. And the Prosecution wished her a Merry Christmas.
The Sydney grandmother expressed delight at seeing her son and daughter in court. The man hugged her and the woman kissed her cheek as Exposto smiled then cried. The man and woman wiped away her tears.
Exposto, formerly from East Timor, had last worked with an organisation helping human trafficking victims in East Timor.
Exposto was arrested three years ago with the drugs in her bag when she was transiting through Kuala Lumpur airport en route to Melbourne from Shanghai and has lived under the shadow death ever since waiting for today’s verdict.
Exposto and her lawyers argued that she was the victim of an online love scam and that she had no idea the 1.5kg of methamphetamine was in the backpack she was asked to bring to Australia for a US servicemen she had met online.
The drugs were stitched inside a secret compartment of the backpack and were uncovered when she voluntarily offered her bag for search by Customs officials at the airport during a stopover when she opted to leave the airport, something she did not need to do.
During her trial Exposto told the court that she had fallen for a man she met online called Captain Daniel Smith, who she believed was a US soldier serving in Afghanistan. Exposto said that in September 2013 he had proposed marriage to her when her own marriage in Australia was going “a bit sour”.
She said Smith sang to her a few times a day and sent her love poems and photos of himself. “He made me feel loved, he made me feel wanted”, Exposto reportedly told the court.
CONSISTENT DENIALS
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In recapping the case, Justice Cha said today that Exposto had sent him money several times out of love and pity and had been persuaded to travel to Shanghai several times on the pretext of signing retirement documents for the supposed US soldier. All her travel expenses were to be borne by Captain Daniel Smith.
When she arrived at her Shanghai hotel she was told her hotel stay was only covered for one night so she had to pay for the other two days herself. On the evening of December 6, 2014 a man passed her a backpack and some documents to sign for the soldier.
She understood she was to carry the backpack, purportedly containing presents for the man’s family in Melbourne. She saw shirts inside still wrapped in plastic.
When she landed at Kuala Lumpur airport at 4pm on December 7, 2014, during a five-hour transit, she followed other passengers to the transit area and willingly placed her three bags for inspection even though she was not asked by Customs officers to do so.
They then asked to rescan her backpack and she denied it was hers. When it was cut open, Exposto expressed surprise at its contents — the drug ice.
The defence case was that Exposto consistently denied the bag was hers but was given to her by a man called Tega in Shanghai. In addition to the drugs in the bag, the shirts and retirement documents of the US soldier were found in the bag.
Her defence had submitted that had maintained a consistent storyline and had not employed an “after thought defence”.
Her defence team had also called expert witnesses — cybersecurity experts and psychologists with experience in internet scams who had testified the case fitted the characteristic of an internet scam — that Exposto was motivated to find an ideal partner and found it in a retired army officer. She had been subjected to grooming where he had expressed his love for her.
The defence had also argued the way the drugs were concealed could not be seen by the naked eye.
The prosecution had argued that Exposto knew the drugs were in the bag and had plenty of time to examine it and that if she had looked she would have seen the secret compartment.
Her lawyer, Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, said many women had probably been conned in similar circumstances by Captain Daniel Smith, who he described as a scammer.
Mr Abdullah and fellow lawyer, Australian Tania Scivetti are a top-flight legal team in Kuala Lumpur who have previously saved the lives of other Australians facing the death penalty in Malaysia on drugs charges.
THE SHADOW OF BARLOW AND CHAMBERS
Australians Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers were executed in Malaysia on July 7, 1986, convicted of heroin trafficking. They had 179 grams of heroin hidden in a suitcase and intended flying to Sydney from Kuala Lumpur. Relations between Australia and Malaysia hit a low after then Prime Minister Bob Hawke described the hangings as “barbaric”. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, responding to claims that no-one had the right to take someone’s life, suggested this be told to drug traffickers.
Seven years later Queenslander Michael McAuliffe was hanged, on June 19, 1993, after being arrested at Penang airport with 141.89 grams of heroin inside condoms packed in a money belt around his waist.
On December 2, 2005 Melbourne man Van Tuong Nguyen was hanged in Singapore’s Changi prison after being convicted of trafficking 396.2 grams of heroin. In Singapore, the death penalty is mandatory for drug smuggling.
In April 2015 Australian men Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan were executed by Indonesian firing squads after all appeals against their death penalties were exhausted. They had been convicted of attempting to traffic 8.2kg of heroin from Bali to Australia.
Perth man Dominic Bird escaped the death penalty in Malaysia in 2014 after he was acquitted of trying to supply an undercover police officer with 167 grams of methamphetamine in March 2012. He was acquitted after the prosecution’s case fell apart amid allegations of corruption against the prosecution’s police witness. Set free, he was just about to board a flight home to Australia when he was rearrested at the plane’s boarding gate. Later the Court of Appeal threw out the prosecution’s bid to overturn the acquittal and Bird was set free for a second time.
He was represented by the same legal team as Exposto.
Melbourne woman Emma Louise L’Aiguille also escaped the death penalty in Malaysia, when in November 2012, prosecutors dropped drug trafficking charges against her after her lawyers, also the same team representing Exposto, argued there was no evidence she had any knowledge the drugs — 1kg of methamphetamine- were in the car she was driving in Kuala Lumpur.