A 27-year-old woman fell to the floor when the Tangerang...

A 27-year-old woman fell to the floor when the Tangerang District Court handed down the death penalty for her attempt to smuggle a kilogram of heroin into Indonesia from Nepal.
Presiding judge Ade Komarudin said the defendant, Merry Utami, from Sukoharjo, Central Java, was found guilty of smuggling heroin at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on October 31, 2002.
Komarudin said there were no mitigating factors determining a lighter sentence since the crime endangered the nation's future and the lives of thousands of people.
Clad in a long-sleeved white shirt and black pants, the short-haired woman kept her head bowed during the hearing, but she collapsed when the panel of judges read out her punishment. Several visitors and officers from the prosecutor's office helped her to her feet and later carried her to the minivan that would take her to the Tangerang Women's Penitentiary. Merry sobbed and repeatedly said she was sorry.
Since 2000, the district court has sentenced to death 17 of the 18 who stood trial on similar charges. Those sentenced to death for drug smuggling include five Nepalese, five Indonesians, three Nigerians, an Angolan, a Zimbabwean, a Pakistani and a Thai woman.
The only defendant to receive life imprisonment, Malawian Namaona Dennis, appealed to the high court, which in turn handed down the death sentence to him in December 2001.Despite the death penalty, drug smugglers do not seem deterred.