KEY POINTS:
Gold Coast beauty student turned drug courier Schapelle Corby has lost the final appeal against her 20-year drug-trafficking sentence.
The former Gold Coast beauty student now has only one option - a plea for clemency to Indonesia's President, Dr Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. But this requires an admission of guilt, and Yudhoyono has previously voiced his opposition to granting pardons for drug crimes.
Friday's unanimous decision, 18 months after the appeal hearings in Denpasar District Court, was made at a meeting of three Supreme Court judges in Jakarta. A court spokesman said the judges might have wanted to send a strong message to other drug offenders in Indonesia.
"One of [the reasons] could be to create a deterrence effect for other perpetrators," he said.
The judgment says there was no sentencing error. "There are no judges' mistakes or obvious mistakes because the Supreme Court, in considering the law of sentencing, has considered leniency and aggravating factors," it recorded.
"With that, the Supreme Court considers the [arguments] made by the judicial review appealer cannot be justified."
Corby is serving 20 years in Kerobokan prison, Bali, after she was detained in October 2004 at Bali airport with 4.1kg of marijuana in her boogie board bag. Her lawyers argued she was an innocent victim of baggage handlers who were shuttling drugs around Australia.
Corby's 19-page appeal document also alleged mistakes and discrepancies had been made by the judges who convicted her. It argued she should have been acquitted because judges did not distinguish between importing, owning and using marijuana.
Corby's lawyers also argued the sentence was more harsh than punishments for similar offences elsewhere in Indonesia. The Supreme Court rejected all those arguments.
Corby's hopes now lie in the long-running negotiations about a prisoner transfer agreement. That could eventually allow her to serve part of her sentence in Australia.
But negotiations are painfully slow. One sticking point is Indonesia's apparent opposition to the transfer to Australia of prisoners convicted of drug crimes or terrorism.
