Corby to take sedative to help her make final statement

JAKARTA - Accused drug smuggler Schapelle Corby will be sedated to prevent an attack of nerves as she protests her innocence to judges in a final "plea from her heart", her lawyer said yesterday.

Corby will read a personal letter to judges hearing her case in Bali on Thursday, saying she was an innocent victim of Australian drug gangs.

She will also attack the prosecutor for demanding a life sentence during his final statement to the Denpasar District Court which is hearing her case.

Corby's Indonesian lawyer Lily Lubis said her client would need a sedative to help her face Thursday's hearing, after stress attacks forced the cancellation of two recent court appearances.

"Of course, yes," she said when asked if the 27-year-old former Gold Coast beauty student would continue taking powerful calming pills which helped her through her court appearance last week.

"Whatever she says will be be counting as consideration.

"Of course she will get nervous, of course she will be afraid that it doesn't mean anything to the judges.

"But, hopefully, the situation will support her to be focused and then concentrate so that she can read the plea from her heart."

The defence team and Corby had also been unsettled by noisy protests in an adjoining court in recent weeks as students turned out in force to back a free-speech demonstrator involved in a clash with Indonesia's president, Lubis said.

Prosecutor Ida Bagus Wiswantanu last week said Corby had been proven officially and convincingly guilty of attempting to smuggle 4.1kg of marijuana into Bali, demanding judges hand her a life sentence.

But Lubis said Corby would ask judges "not to be blind" and would protest her innocence in a letter she was writing alone in her cell at Kerobokan Prison.

"Basically, she will state that she is innocent, the fact that when she heard it is a life sentence from the prosecutor, that basically it is not fair, that there is no justice for her," she said.

"She will protest, complain to the prosecutor, and ask the judges not to be blind like the prosecutor."

The letter, which Lubis hoped to receive yesterday, would be translated into Indonesian before being read to the court, first by Corby in English, then by her translator.

A written copy would also be given to the judges hearing her case.

"It is the chance for her to say the way it is and then the judges can judge what it's all about," Lubis said.

"Hopefully it will make their belief even more strong, the belief of her innocence."

- AAP