‘Inexcusable’ act after Australian dad is slain in Bali
When a night out in Bali took a devastating turn, an Australian man was left for dead and an Indonesian man has now been jailed.
An Indonesian man who killed an Australian tourist during a drunken fight in Bali has been sentenced to just 18 months in prison.
Perth man Troy Scott Johnston, 41, died on February 23 when he was hit over the head with a metal chair after a night spent drinking at the Uncle Benz Cafe, Badung with the owner of the bar, I Gede Wijaya, 39.
According to Wijaya, the fateful evening unfolded after the two men drank a local spirit known as arak at the bar, leading to Johnston becoming inebriated and urinating on Wijaya’s leg.
When Wijaya complained, he said that Johnston became aggressive and threw glasses from the bar at him. As Wijaya tried to quell the situation, Johnston apparently picked up a bar stool to strike him, causing a tussle between the two men that ended when Wijaya hit Johnston over the head with the metal chair.
After the fatal blow, Wijaya then fled the scene, leaving Johnston’s Indonesian wife, Ni Nyoman Purnianti, to find him.
Johnston, who worked for Rio Tinto at Perth Airport, was on holiday in Bali with his wife and his young son at the time of his death, and had reportedly last been in contact with Purnianti at around 10.30pm.
When Purnianti and her brother went to look for Johnston at around 3.45am, the police said that they found him with head injuries and “lying in a pool of blood” on the terrace of the bar.
While Johnston was rushed to hospital, he died from his injuries.
In court, presiding judge Gede Putra Astawa rebuked Wijaya for not doing more to save Johnston’s life after he hit him.
“Leaving the victim alone is inexcusable. The defendant could have called for an ambulance to assist the victim. His self-defence led to someone being injured and losing their life,” he said.
On August 24, at Denpasar District Court, Judge Astawa said that Wijaya had been found “legally and convincingly guilty of committing the criminal act of fatal assault” and sentenced him to 18 months in prison, minus time already served.
While the sentence may appear light given Indonesia’s hard line reputation against crime, Indonesian legal experts told news.com.au that they believed that the verdict was appropriate given the circumstances.
Elizabeth Ghozali, a lecturer in criminal law at Santo Thomas Catholic University in Medan, told news.com.au that the verdict was in line with the crime.
“Murder was not his intention. He had already told the victim verbally to stop, so the causality of the offence was as a result of Johnston’s actions. The judge did not impose a heavy sentence because the altercation was started by the victim,” she said.
Some of the legal questions around the case centre on why Wijaya was charged with negligence leading to death rather than murder.
When Wijaya was originally arrested in February, the police had asked for him to be charged with murder, but this was overturned by the prosecutor’s office which opted for a negligence charge instead.
Yulius Benyamin Saren, a lawyer based in Bali who was not involved in the case, told news.com.au that the choice of articles was the domain of the prosecutor in Indonesia.
“If the perpetrator intended to kill the victim then he should have been charged with murder, but if he only intended to teach him a lesson and unfortunately the victim died, then he should have been charged with negligence leading to death,” he said.
“This is what differentiates criminal fault and negligence.”
At a press conference organised by the police when he was arrested, Wijaya expressed regret at the incident and said he had not meant to kill Johnston.
“I knew him very well, so I didn’t have any intention to do that,” he said.
In Indonesia, negligence leading to death can carry a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. The prosecution had asked for a three year jail term for Wijaya, something that lecturer Ghozali said was not unusual.
“In Indonesia, prosecutor’s rarely ask for the maximum sentence, usually they will ask for about two-thirds of the maximum term or something like that,” she said. “In this case however, three years does seem rather low. They could have asked for five years or something closer to the seven year term.”
She also said that judges often hand down sentences of around half the prosecutor’s proposed terms, which is perhaps why Astawa opted for a 1.5 year sentence.
Bali lawyer Seran said that there were different ways to look at whether justice had been served, and that he would have claimed self defence had he been Wijaya’s lawyer and hoped to avoid a custodial sentence of any kind.
“On the flip side, if I had been the victim’s lawyer, I would have been dissatisfied with the verdict,” he said.
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