Constitutional Justices Suhartoyo, Arief Hidayat, and Saldi Isra at the judicial review hearing of Law No. 8 of 1981 on the Criminal Procedure Code, Wednesday (4/6/2022). Photo by Humas MK/BPE.

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Wednesday, April 6, 2022 | 13:50 WIB

JAKARTA, Public Relations—The Constitutional Court (MK) held another judicial review hearing of Law No. 8 of 1981 on the Criminal Procedure Code (KUHAP) in the panel courtroom on Wednesday, April 6, 2022. The case No. 28/PUU-XX/2022 was filed by Umar Husni, Director of PT Karya Jaya Satria, who asserted that Article 143 paragraph (3) of the KUHAP contradicted Article 1 paragraph (3) and Article 28D paragraph (1) of the 1945 Constitution.  

At this second hearing, Wahyu Budi Wibowo, one of the Petitioner’s legal counsels, conveyed the revisions to the petition. First, the elaboration on the Petitioner’s legal standing and arguments were made more concise. Second, the Petitioner elaborated on similar cases to his case at the Purwokerto District Court.

“In the petition, we include eight decisions by several courts—the District Courts of West Jakarta, Purwokerto, Surabaya, Kisaran, Palu, Palembang, Majene, and East Jakarta. All cases in those decisions are similar to what the Petitioner underwent,” Wahyu said before Constitutional Justices Suhartoyo (panel chair), Arief Hidayat, and Saldi Isra.

Also read: Provision on Indictment in Criminal Procedure Code Challenged

At the preliminary hearing, the Petitioner revealed that he had received indictments that had been declared legally invalid in a criminal case on taxation. He received three indictments, one from the District Court of Purwokertwo, two from the High Court of Semarang. He believes he could one day receive the fourth, fifth indictments and so on without any clear limits on the revision of indictments that are declared legally invalid by a court. However, Wahyu added, the issue in this concrete case is that those invalid indictments could then be revised by the public prosecutor or be returned to an investigation.

Reflecting on the criminal case process with the three previous indictments, we believe it shows that the public prosecutor is deadlocked in making improvements. The impasse must be broken or can only be resolved if the investigation process is restarted and a comprehensive case file is organized and compiled so that the indictment is not declared legally invalid this time

The Petitioner also believes the a quo law has been interpreted to mean that there has not been any limitation for the public prosecutor in revising and bringing the indictment that has been declared null and void. They could also contest the court’s decision, following Article 156 paragraph (3) of the KUHAP. That way, swift, simple, and cost-effective trial process did not happen and the Petitioner has not obtained legal certainty.

The Petitioner believes lack of limitation in the revision of indictment could impair the sense of justice and legal certainty because the public prosecutor could file an indictment for the fourth time and there could be a counter for the fourth time. Therefore, he requested that the Court declare the phrase “legally invalid” in Article 143 paragraph (3) of the KUHAP conditionally unconstitutional and not legally binding insofar as not be interpreted “the case be returned to the investigator with revision limited to only 1 (one) time.”

Writer        : Sri Pujianti
Editor        : Lulu Anjarsari P.
PR            : Fitri Yuliana
Translator  : Yuniar Widiastuti (NL)

Translation uploaded on 4/8/2022 07:25 WIB

Disclaimer: The original version of the news is in Indonesian. In case of any differences between the English and the Indonesian versions, the Indonesian version will prevail.

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