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Judicial Pardon Without a Verdict Category: Rechterlijk Pardon and Narcotics Sentencing in Indonesia’s Criminal Law Reform
Abstract
Law Number 1 of 2023 on the Indonesian Criminal Code introduces rechterlijk pardon (judicial pardon) in Article 54 paragraph (2), empowering a court to declare a defendant guilty while withholding punishment or measures in the interests of justice and humanity. This article argues that the principal obstacle to that instrument is not judicial culture but an unresolved procedural status. Law Number 20 of 2025 on the Criminal Procedure Code retains the three-verdict architecture inherited from Law Number 8 of 1981 — conviction, acquittal, and discharge from all charges — and therefore supplies no judgment form in which a pardon can be pronounced, recorded, or reviewed. The study employs normative legal research combining statutory, conceptual, doctrinal, and functional comparative approaches, examining Article 54 paragraph (2) against Article 9a of the Dutch Criminal Code, Article 138 of the Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure, and Dutch case law classifying a finding of guilt without punishment as a conviction. Three findings follow. First, judicial pardon is doctrinally irreducible to discharge from all charges, because it presupposes rather than negates criminal liability. Second, in narcotics cases judicial pardon requires explicit criteria confining it to assessed users and excluding traffickers. Third, judicial pardon reconciles legal justice with moral justice only where discretion is procedurally disciplined. The article proposes recognizing judicial pardon as a fourth verdict category and recommends corresponding amendment of the Criminal Procedure Code.
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.33756/jlr.v1i2.36520
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