The South Jakarta District Court today sentenced Private Second Class Richard Eliezer to 1 year and 6 months in prison, minus time served in police custody, for the murder of Police Brigadier Nofriansyah Yosua Hutabarat.
Richard’s sentence is far lighter than the 12 years prosecutors demanded. Having been in police custody since August 2022, Richard only has to serve one year in prison following his conviction.
The court had approved Richard’s appeal to be a justice collaborator in order to untangle the web of conspiracies in the case, which served as a mitigating factor in his conviction.
Judges in the trial concluded that former internal affairs boss Ferdy Sambo ordered Richard to shoot Yosua at the high-ranking cop’s South Jakarta home on July 8, 2022. Richard, 24, and Yosua, who was 27 at the time of his murder, served as aides to Sambo.
A major factor for the court’s leniency towards Richard was that they believed the low-ranked officer was under immense pressure to carry out the order from his boss, a police general.
Sambo was sentenced to death by the same court on Monday for the premeditated murder of Yosua. Not only did he order Richard to kill Yosua, the court said Sambo also pulled the trigger before enacting a massive cover up that likely involved dozens of other police officers.
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The court did not find it necessary to establish a motive for the murder due to the deplorable nature of Sambo’s crime.
Sambo’s defense team claimed that he ordered Yosua’s murder after the victim sexually assaulted the general’s wife, Putri Chandrawati. The court said this theory was baseless.
The prosecution in Sambo’s trial, on the other hand, suggested that Sambo had Yosua killed after he had learned about the victim’s affair with Putri. This, too, was rejected by the court, as well as Yosua’s family.
The term “Richard Eliezer” is the top trending topic on Twitter today, with an overwhelming number of netizens expressing their elation as they don’t believe Richard deserved to be severely punished. There is also widespread praise for the trial’s judges for showing leniency towards Richard.
Eliezer’s sentence concludes the series of trials for Yosua’s murder at the district court level. Other than Sambo and Richard, the South Jakarta District Court sentenced Putri to 20 years in prison, her chaffeur Kuat Ma’ruf to 15 years in prison, and a cop named Rizky Rizal to 13 years in prison for being accessories to Yosua’s premeditated murder.
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