Much of the prosecution's case turns on the arrest of Corby at Ngurah Rai airport. She arrived in Bali in the afternoon of October 8 with her brother, 17-year-old James Kisina, and two friends: Alyth McComb, 25, and Katrina Richards, 17. According to the official indictment, a Customs official saw "forbidden goods" in the bag after it was unloaded from the plane and put through an external X-ray machine.
"Because he was suspicious, the official followed the bag to the baggage claim area and kept watch to determine who owned the bodyboard bag," the indictment says. Corby retrieved the bag and the official maintained his surveillance of her, noting she looked anxious, the indictment continues.
Customs official I Gusti Nyoman Winata told Denpasar District Court that he asked Corby to open the blue bag, but she unzipped only a front pocket. He opened the main zip himself, he said. "When I opened it a bit, she said: 'No,"' Winata said. "I asked: 'Why?', and she said: 'I have some,' and looked confused."
Winata also said she blocked his hand to stop him opening the main zip. Finally the bag was opened, and officials saw a pillow-case sized clear plastic zip-lock bag filled with 4.1kg of marijuana heads.
Winata said Corby identified it as marijuana. "I asked the suspect what was in the plastic bags. She said it was marijuana. I asked her, 'How do you know?' She said, 'I smelled it when you opened the bag."'
Yet casting some doubt on whether the English conversations were fully understood, a second Customs officer, Komang Gelgel, said Corby had told Winata she owned the marijuana, an unlikely admission. "She said, 'This is mine, I own it,"' Gelgel said, a claim Corby vehemently denied.
Gelgel and two police officers largely agreed with Winata's version of events, including Corby's attempt to prevent him opening the main zip. It was damning testimony from four Indonesian civil servants, all apparently objective witnesses.
Corby flatly denied she had tried to avoid opening the main zip of the bodyboard bag. "Well, firstly he didn't ask me to open the bag, he just asked whose bag it was," she told the court. "I opened the bag and I don't remember saying anything or hitting anyone's hand. I opened the bag and then I closed it."
Corby says she voluntarily opened the bag because she thought it was expected of her. She told the court she didn't know what was in the bag, even after the zip was opened. "I was scared, I didn't know what it was," she said. "Then when I closed my boogie board bag up, a strong smell came out. I was very scared, I didn't know what was going on."
Corby didn't deny she identified the substance as marijuana but she said flatly she had never claimed it as hers. She was not looking restless or suspicious, she said; she had been happy about her Bali holiday until grim reality struck.
"I open it, I lift it up and I'm surprised, there's a plastic bag and half-open, and I'm like 'Ohhh!' And I close it up, I can smell it," she told the court. "I never, at any stage, stated that that marijuana belongs to me; never, ever, have I stated that."
In their last statement to the court, Corby's lawyers averred she had said, in a startled fashion, "There is something" rather than "I have some" to Winata, the first time this version of events was related. The lawyers said Winata's ability to speak fluent English was in doubt. Corby's brother and her friends supported her testimony.
Corby also denied one of the police officer's claims that her flippers were found on top of the pillow-case sized plastic sack of marijuana. "There is no way that the flippers can be on top of the plastic bag," she told the court. "I packed my bodyboard and flippers, I did not pack the plastic bag. The flippers cannot be on top of the plastic bag, it can't be there."
Regarding her failure to notice the bag's extra weight, Corby told the court the bag's handle had somehow been broken en route to Bali, meaning she had to drag it.
Asked if that was why she failed to notice the added 4kg, she replied: "Well, I had my suitcase and another bag and I had never dreamed there was anything else in my boogie board bag than what I had just packed."
One of Corby's chief lawyers, Erwin Siregar, asked the two police officer witnesses, Wayan Suwita and I Gusti Ngurah Bagus Astawa, why no fingerprints had been taken from the ziplock plastic sack inside the bodyboard bag. Suwita answered: "We knew it was marijuana, so it wasn't necessary." Siregar pointed out that the crime of drug smuggling potentially carried the death penalty and asked if that made a "perfect investigation" more important.
"It's not my duty to answer that," Suwita replied. "Ask my superior." Astawa also said he did not know whether fingerprints were taken. "It's not my field," he explained. Asked whether fingerprints were necessary in Corby's case, he replied, "No."
Fingerprinting is not a common procedure in Indonesia, where the under-resourced police force is hard-pressed to deal with burgeoning crime.
The defence, though, submitted transcripts of television footage showing gloved police officers dealing with the nine Australians recently arrested for heroin smuggling in Bali. Why gloves for the Bali Nine and not for Schapelle, came the question from the defence.
A transcript of an Indonesian TV interview with Bali drug squad chief Bambang Sugiarto was also tendered to the court by the defence after the closing addresses. Sugiarto said Corby's "condition" was only 50 per cent, apparently referring to shortcomings in the fingerprinting and videotaping elements of the investigation.
Countering the defence's queries about the failure to fingerprint the plastic sack of marijuana, prosecutor Ni Wayan Sinaryati told the court it was unnecessary.
"In this case, the criminal perpetrator was caught red-handed by the Customs officers at the airport," Sinaryati said.
The defence was also unable to prove the weight of Corby's bag when she checked in at Brisbane airport, since all the bags were weighed together and police in Bali did not weigh all the bags for an overall comparison. Nor did Balinese police take up an AFP request to test the marijuana to determine its origin; there was no need, they said, they already had a case.
