Fulfilling The Rights of Defendant Thomas Trikasih Lembong in Criminal Corruption Proceedings
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This research critically analyzes procedural and substantive anomalies in the trial court decision regarding the alleged corruption of former Trade Minister Thomas Trikasih Lembong. Utilizing a jurisprudential method via statutory and case-law approaches, this study uncovers international fair trial violations involving nine excessive detention extensions and an extreme equality of arms imbalance during court proceedings. Substantively, judicial considerations expose the absence of malicious intent (mens rea) in executing strategic commodity stability discretion, simultaneously revealing epistemological flaws within the state financial loss audit by the prosecutorial authority. By applying Gustav Radbruch’s theory, formalistic criminalization demonstrably destroys substantive justice for public officials while ignoring legal utility. Alternatively, this manuscript proposes a novel conceptual framework termed the Discretion-Penal Proportionality Test model as an upstream preventive safeguard. This systematic reconstruction is engineered to combat the lawfare pathology or macroeconomic policy criminalization, thereby safeguarding constitutional governance across democratic developing nations within the Global South.
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